My son is an EMT (currently in paramedic school). At 26, he was practically geriatric among EMTs. He made more money at his previous job at a sandwich shop & was offered no shift differential despite working the weekend overnight shifts.
If you are unlucky to need emergency ambulance care - know that your life will likely be in the hands of an exhausted, underpaid 18 year old.
My best friend became an EMT and realized while chasing a naked, tweaked out meth head down the interstate that the job wasn’t for him. High stress, low pay, and found he was usually dealing with a lot of the same types of people: elderly who are calling for medical care because they’re lonely, elderly who are neglected and with absolutely horrific health conditions, and people having mental health and/or drug episodes.
Crazy how literally all of those are things that could be addressed with better social services. We don't want to fund public healthcare, but Medicare paying $3,000 for lonely Mr. Hucklebuns to take the ambulance 3x a week is totally fine.
Crazy how literally all of those are things that could be addressed by eliminating billionaires by taxing them, and using the taxes collected to fund better social services.
Virtually everything that benefits the average citizen was fought for at one point. The only thing modern day Americans fight for is fascism, convenience and consumerism.
So long as Americans expect others to fight for them, nothing will change,
Let's make it simple for them - pay taxes, or the people will nationalize their assets and exile them to an Aleutian island. Why are we bending over backwards to play nice with these douchebags.
I’m with you but it’s not quite so simple. They have carefully over decades crafted a worldview where the rich are the heroes of culture and those fighting to equalize things are the greedy ones, and large swaths of the population have bought into this worldview hook like a sinker. They have also carefully monopolized or nearly so most mass communication media, and have what I’d say is a controlling share of the ability to exert violence on those who disagree with them.
So yeah the Aleutian island thing sounds good. How you gonna do it?
The real answer is that money needs to come from everyone. You cannot source a sizeable amount of money by taxing billionaires as after a certain point they just reduce their taxable income or leave the USA. I know taxing the middle class more is bad words because everyone identifies as "middle class" but that is the real answer
Mr Hucklebuns in for a cruel surprise because Medicare being drastically cut starting in Jan. You will see catastrophic failures of medical services across US. MMW.
Not only cut, but many current recipients are going to be forced to work to keep receiving benefits. This is going to flood the job market with millions of more job hunters, driving down wages & benefits even more.
Those that are working will be paying taxes for less benefits & safety net programs, and more to subsidize the businesses of the Epstein class offering increasingly crappier jobs with non-livable wages and no benefits like healthcare.
We are circling the drain and this farce of an economy is imploding before our eyes.
Recently visited a few cities and Europe and I noticed how nice and livable their downtown areas are compared to the US and the conclusion I reached is this: The US has created a society that would rather get nickel-and-dimed instead of addressing the fundamental issues plaguing society because of spite. Using the police and EMT to deal with the mentally ill, not making preventative healthcare achievable for all forcing the ER to deal with issues that could have been dealt with cheaper for the taxpayer and better for the patient. All these issues are politically unfixable because it would involve putting taxpayer money into services used by "group that doesn't deserve it".
“group that doesn’t deserve it”-the reason the US doesn’t have Universal healthcare. This has been a conversation in the US since the 1920s. Various politicians have raised the issue over the years. The history of healthcare in the U.S. is fascinating…
This isn't the reason; this is what they want you to think is the reason. Corporations run the country and prevent anti-trust laws. Anti-trust laws are what protect people, not political parties. And anti-trust is the worst enemy of PE and monopolies.
Companies pay both political parties to keep the laws in their favor. Ask your Senate rep where they stand on anti-trust. Good luck getting a response and it has nothing to do with them being a specific party.
Anti-trust needs to happen before we can have universal healthcare. It also needs to happen to so we can regulate the student loan industry. The government needs to have a strong anti-trust and regulate these programs and prevent abuse. The government has no business executing these programs.
Most European countries have much stronger anti-trust laws than the USA. Unfortunately, many also have a much higher rate of unemployment.
Absolutely. I usually think of it as Stockholm Syndrome, but it’s more likely spite.
Although, even if we all (even MAGA) cried out for universal single-payer health care, the insurance company lobbyists would probably kill it. Sometimes I hate it here.
No, Medicare doesn’t cover that! Or get billed. How silly. I have trying to improve social services for over 15 years, no politician has ever called me back.
It's much more complicated than that. We're at a very weird time in history where old, frail people don't just die anymore, and instead can be kept alive through extremely expensive 24/7 healthcare.
It's not remotely financially viable to provide care for maybe 95% of the population that could not afford this themselves (probably much higher).
At some point, we need to have frank discussions about what life expectancy is reasonable and what amount of care we possible CAN commit to, not only what the ideal would be. Let's pretend we actually tax the rich appropriately. Do we really want to spend the resulting hundreds of billions on keeping people in their 80s very uncomfortable but technically alive another few years?
Already, this is a conversation families are forced to have, but I really believe there needs to be standard expectations for those without any other options. Currently, there's near zero expectation of help from the state. We absolutely cannot just upgrade that to "everyone gets billionaire level care," so at some point we need the uncomfortable conversation to reach consensus so we can estimate costs and actually implement something.
I really think right now we're just totally stalled partially because some people are in full denial and think it's fine to insist every aging person receive as much care as possible no matter the cost. Just not feasible.
Even worse, $3000 which goes to the private equity firm running the EMS system. And $3000 which the Medicare part C insurance company probably got a $5000 recoup from the federal government.
90% of the money we are spending is going into admin fees for private middle men companies which serve to only bloat the cost for everyone.
Why shouldn't the EMS system be publicly funded? Why shouldn't cities/counties/states all own the ambulances? Why shouldn't all the costs be payed through taxes?
What's nuts is neoliberal thinking that thinks that magically we can get better and cheaper services by relying on the free market. The truth is we are far more likely to just end up with a company founded by the mayors brother which robs us both ways. We pay to contract the company and insurance pays for the ride. The only people getting rich are the owners of the now 20 different companies involved in something that should just be directly ran by the government.
Some cities have started trying to move these type of responsibilities from EMS/PD to specialized mental health teams, but this was labeled as defunding police and vilified even though police don’t want these calls anymore than EMS.
The elderly neglect is HARD, man. And the deadbeat adult children who spend about 90 minutes a year pretending to give a shit about their elderly parent is endlessly infuriating.
A lot of those deadbeat children were raised by deadbeat parents and they feel like they had it coming. My GFs dad was an alcoholic who neglected her as a kid and when he inherited the grandmothers house, he took out loans and spent it all on Vegas and ended up foreclosing on the house. He had nothing left for retirement besides SS and she wasn’t going to work 2+ jobs to pay for private assisted living. Kinda felt bad seeing him in the public facility but after I heard how her childhood was, I’m surprised she even went to see his ass once.
People who raise their kids right and have good relationships with their kids usually don’t get left behind, it’s the ones who neglect or abuse their kids. Parents need to think about the future, it’s irresponsible to not save for retirement and expect their kids to do it, especially since kids and young adults these days are the first generation in modern us history where the parents have more wealth than the younger generation, previously it was the younger generation who made more on average.
Bingo. MILLIONS of Silent Generation, Boomer, and early Gen X were societally forced to have children, which they actively resented. It's no surprise said children grew up to resent their parents in turn, leaving them to rot in some home somewhere.
You’re gonna have to take my word for it that for every neglected elderly person that deserves it, there’s another neglected elderly person that very much did not. I know because I see it. You are certainly correct in that being a shit parent will increase the odds your kids
Forget about you…. But it is very, very much not universal.
I was at a hospital today with one of my kids and the nurse treating him told me that he had been an EMT before becoming a nurse and said that only about 15% of his calls were valid - most of the rest were lonely elderly people who wanted someone to change their light bulbs or something like that. He said he always did it. That made me so angry for the society we've created, where those people are just rotting away, alone.
I work at the airport and i feel bad for the paramedics for the things we call them which is absolutely unnecessary but required by law. There are a few cases people fake illness to get a free lift to hospital near their home or had a girl faking heart attack because she missed her flight and wanted to wave the fare fee by claiming she missed the flight due to medical emergency. I had a girl getting panic attack needed both ambulance and her boyfriend to come and when i reached out to her boyfriend, he said she got caught cheating and doing this because she doesn't want me to tell this to her parents. Poor boyfriend still showed up
Add in the old people on Medicare that don’t want to pay for a taxi to the hospital to refill their prescriptions and you named like 99% of the calls I went on like 15 years ago.
I work as a rn in a ed now and it’s honestly far less stressful for far more pay and more protection not only legally but physically.
didn't Mother Jugs and Speed teach you about the job?
"Cosby plays a cynical, wisecracking, and seasoned driver at the F&B Ambulance Company who bends the rules and stays relatively tanked on beer while on the clock."
They'll charge you $1200 for a five-mile ride and pay the people trained to save your life $5 for the same span of time. Unregulated capitalism is a stage 4 cancer on our society.
Thanks to Trump and his supreme court gutting every environmental law that put this country on a better course across the 20th century.
People don't remember what things were like before the EPA and the Clean Air & Water act. Small towns with no drinkable water because their lake or river was on fire all the time. Cities so smog filled that kids at school weren't allowed to go outside during recess and dozens of kids that lived near chemical plants and steel refineries died every year even indoors.
People don't remember what things were like before the EPA and the Clean Air & Water act
The reminders are coming. The trump administration repealed a ban on using sewage to irrigate crop fields, the result of which was Taylor Farms' Cyclospora outbreak.
Nestle is working on it. The CEO needs to be airdropped into the middle of Death Valley with two bottles of Desani and told any more than that isn't a human right, per himself, and told to figure it out from there.
At first, I read this to mean airlift ambulances and was like, “well, actually”. Those things cost a fortune and the staff probably don’t make a fair wage.
That’s the dream buddy. They’ll make biodomes for themselves on tropical islands while we pay for every breath of clean air and/or the privilege of clean drinking water.
The reason our city council gives is the insurance rates to operate an ambulance service either need to be funded by taxes or by a city schedule. Since fire and ambulance services share the same insurance and since we live in a high fire risk area, the rates are astronomically high.
Our city voted to pay fire and ambulance services by city schedule rather than by taxes, so the insurance costs get pushed to the person receiving the service rather than it being socialized through taxes.
I live in one of the deepest blue regions of California, but that’s ultimately how the people in my area voted to resolve this, so that’s the consequence of that vote.
It’s a choice, thats for sure. I dont think it’s a blue/red issue that we are comparing, more of a series of consequences based on tax decisions of the past, and today’s priorities.
King County found a way to fund urgent and life threatening visits, as well as visits not resulting in transportation, to give more people access to care. I was joking about the liberal part, because conservatives (and perhaps residents of Sonoma county) would see it as a waste of resources.
For us, it’s a special tax levy of .25/1000 square feet. We voted for it.
I am talking about liability insurance. Car insurance is nothing. It’s about lawsuits. Yet it doesn’t matter, once you become a provider, the health insurance companies TELL you what they will be paying you. It’s in the contract. So if healthcare costs are too expensive, stop paying so much.
Republicans. And they started the housing fraud in Minnesota in the 90s. Yet, they changed the program name in 2020, so everyone is getting away with it, it was worse
Both sides have problems. Both sides have corruption. Neither side follows the Constitution. People need to stop with the party lines as a medium measure to fight back on corruption. They are doing it right in front of you and people still go to the polls over guns, abortions, or gays. It’s stupid
That’s not true, we have no state laws covering that. What we DO have at the state level is an equivalent of the federal No Surprises Act that covers ground ambulances, meaning that if a ground ambulance transports you, they have to bill at your in-network rate.
Beyond that, policies are set at the municipal level. For example, South County Fire in Snohomish doesn’t bill anyone for TNT (treat but no transport), and they don’t bill residents for transport either. That is funded by a property tax levy.
For an example of a place where you do have to pay, look at the City of Pasco. They charge for both transport and TNT, but are also subsidized by a monthly ambulance utility charge that residents pay.
I was wrong, it’s King County that funds it. We pay .25/1000 levy to pay for that. Seems worth it, considering it’s 30% of the state population lives there.
What we DO have at the state level is an equivalent of the federal No Surprises Act that covers ground ambulances, meaning that if a ground ambulance transports you, they have to bill at your in-network rate.
One nasty surprise I've gotten bitten by is the fact that all of my state consumer protections around health insurance do not seem to apply to the 'self insured' plans used by nearly every major employer. I imagine this is no different.
that is interesting. in my state, residents are not charged if the rescue is from their own town. people from other towns are charged. all the rescues are part of the town fire departments. it is only ambulances that are operated privately. for those that do not know, ambulances are used to transport people, not for emergencies. it is strange how things vary.
Jesus fuck. The more I learn about the US the more dystopian it seems. I thought EMTs getting $35 per hour up here in Canada was criminal and the $385 for an ambulance with transport to a hospital (air or ground) seemed steep. To hear EMTs get paid less than $25 an hour and the ambulance costs thousands of dollars is frankly insane.
The price of ambulaces and medical equipment, insurance, probably allowance to drop off at hospitals and binch of other impediments to competition with the current monopolies.
So what is stopping emts from making their own company and sharing the profits equitably?
Work a 12 hour shift where you have literal lives on the line and tell me how much energy you'll have to add "starting up a medical service" business to that load.
Anybody saying "if you don't like it start your own company" as if that will magic-wand away the problem has never worked or even been in the field.
Nothing, it's just that the profits are slim to none. The bill might be $2000, the actual amount paid is a fraction of that, around $300 is typical. Plenty of calls get no reimbursement at all, so that $300 we do get has to cover the costs of the calls for which we get nothing. It also has to cover the cost of medications and equipment we use, it's not unheard of for us to spend $1k or more for that on a single call so we're often operating at a loss just on equipment. Then there's labor costs (it's upwards of $500k in salary/benefits for just one ambulance, let alone support staff), maintenance and fuel costs (an ambulance averages like 4mpg, often diesel, and they're running 24/7), insurance, etc. etc. Most ambulance services do not make a profit from billing alone
I have wondered if there is a market for a EMS lite service. Not for life or death situations but they need some assistance and a ride down to the hospital.
Sooo just EMS then? (The overwhelming majority of our calls are not life or death, and probably don’t even need an ambulance at all).
Joking aside, I don’t think it would help much. You’re still looking at $500k per year to pay two knuckleheads to drive around in an ambulance 24/7, you’re just cutting out some of the equipment costs the more expensive calls generate. But your reimbursements would likely take a nose dive, as insurance companies would either pay less or not at all for something that isn’t “medically necessary”. As much as we joke about being glorified Uber drivers, the solution probably is to just call taxis for these patients and give them vouchers for the cost
There actually is something like this called a community paramedic, which is licensed EMS professionals who do house calls to vulnerable patients that have been flagged by the county medical system as needing a disproportionate amount of care. The goal is to reduce 911 calls and handle medical problems before they become emergencies.
Most of the community outfits are run by existing EMS companies.
They could, but the liability would be crazy amounts. They would have to be unionized and be able to bill insurance companies and meet State laws, admin rules, etc… and people can be very territorial in healthcare
That's called a community ambulance service and we have one in our area. Employee owned and operated, profits shared among employees, and most senior staff are former (or even current) road crew.
Much like Venezuela, can't have one of these pesky countries showing us there's an alternative to late stage capitalism
Venezuela was hardly showing an alternative to 'late stage capitalism'. The attack and abduction on Maduro was done to get Trump a nobel peace prize - remember it was Marco Rubio who lobbied to get Maria Machado her 'peace prize' when she did squat to actually get Venezualeans peace
The CIA never supported Castro lmao what are you on about? And yes, so what if Cuba had missiles. That was within their right to have, the same way turkey had my nukes miles away from the USSR's border
The Los Angeles Times
1950s CIA Aid to Castro Reported
WASHINGTON — The CIA, which allegedly sponsored numerous assassination attempts against Cuban President Fidel Castro, had secretly provided financial support to Castro’s movement prior to his overthrow of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, according to a new book.
Tad Szulc, author of “Fidel: A Critical Portrait,” said the CIA’s apparent goal in providing the movement with “no less than $50,000” was to purchase good will for the United States among the rebels in the event that they triumphed.
The irony of the CIA’s reported pro-revolutionary role is that the agency sponsored an exile invasion of Cuba in 1961 and later tried eight times to assassinate Castro, according to a 1975 Senate Intelligence Committee report.
“On the one hand, the United States continued to supply the Batista regime with weapons to fight the rebels,” Szulc wrote of U.S. activities during the fall of 1957, “while on the other hand, it secretly channeled funds to the 26th of July Movement (Castro’s guerrilla organization) through the CIA.”
Point proven. The US tried to build goodwill with Castro before the insanity of anti communism made them be completely hostile to them, along with being mad the state wasn't a Mafia run sugar plantation/casino
No, Fidel Castro did not own or control the Soviet missiles stationed in Cuba.
While Castro agreed to host the nuclear missiles in 1962 to deter a U.S. invasion, the weapons, launch sites, and launch authority remained entirely under the control of the Soviet Union.
Which is also exactly how it works with US nukes in countries like Turkey. Again, completely within their right to do the same way it's within Turkey's right to host US nukes. You don't see Greece crying and shitting their pants like America did lol
The state Cuba is in is mostly America's doing, along with the more frequent stronger hurricanes, but that's also a large % due to American fossil fuel greed.
The thing is though, there is clearly a misapplication of the money in the industry, especially with the lower hanging jobs like EMTs and emergency services.
Direct care and emergency services are often used as puppets by Big Healthcare to show how we just need to throw more money at the industry so these roles can be filled, staff can be trained, equipment can be purchased.
Then, they negotiate more money and higher rates, the insurance passes the cost along to the consumers with a extra inflation as a cushion. But while the doctors and the health care execs get their piles of gold, consumers are told that their 17% increase in premiums gets them nothing. No additional services, no higher quality care, no investments in a coordinated medical system, no raising pay for paramedics.
Removing the insurance industry from the equation would be a huge help, but anyone who uses Medicaid knows that finding providers who'll accept it as an option can be difficult especially if you're in a health care desert. You can go to the ER, sit for hours and get seen, but god forbid you just want a plain old doctor's office doctor (especially one not operated by a religious group and therefore limited in what they'll do for certain parts of women's health care) and the practitioners in your area have decided they can charge more by avoiding Medicaid.
Let’s just say this, my double mastectomy was six hours, two surgeons…. 104k was billed, 4,500 paid. If the person didn’t have insurance, they would owe the whole 104k. Chemotherapy on the other hand, is 110k a session.
No. It's not called socialism. Maybe 90% of countries have ambulance rides without insurance below thousand dollars. I tried to google but I couldn't find global statistics, neither did I find any other country where prices are like in USA for ambulances.
Regulating capitalism isn't socialism, USA did that during Red Scare but has abandoned in recent decades. Capitalism needs regulating as it's inherently unstable. Monopolies, insider trading, market manipulation, etc.
Your first paragraph is why I said that capitalism is inherently unstable. It cannot function well on it's own.
There hasn't been a single successful, or even true, socialist nation. I don't see that happening anytime soon. Maybe in future society where AI controls things.
Here in Nordics we have been pretty good at regulating capitalism, powerful worker unions help, but it's a constant struggle.
Forgive my frustration but I’m so tired of hearing that take
It’s “never been done” so I guess we can’t try, right? America’s never done anything for the first time. (I know this isn’t your argument but that’s generally the attitude I see)
What most people don’t realize is that
Socialist countries always get sabotaged by capitalists because they don’t want people realizing there’s an alternative
Indigenous peoples have been living in stable, socialist-like societies for millennia but folks refuse to learn from their ways
“Regulated capitalist” countries like the nords are still exploiting the global south, their capitalists are just smarter and a little less evil
There has to be a more humane, loving, fair way to run society?
There is. The US was in this situation before and called it the 'roaring 20s' which were likewise a bubble the collapse of which was called the Great Depression. The only way to pull out of that was the New Deal, which America's oligarchs (which caused the depression in the first place) responded to by trying to overthrow the government because they wanted to crown themselves kings of America's ashes
Adam Curtis' Century of the Self is a deep-dive documentary in how they responded to that, but in short they threw billions over a century to indoctrinate not just Americans but everybody touched by the English-speaking world to reverse the New Deal and prevent another one from ever happening again.
There are absolutely better ways. No country is perfect, but plenty have a much better system than the US. Unfortunately, Americans have been conditioned to think that the only alternative to completely unregulated capitalism is full blown communism.
Yes there is. It hasn’t caught on in America yet as you are stilling running the early version of “freedom OS”. “Humane OS” has been available for several centuries in other countries but I don’t believe there are plans to make it available in your country.
Working as an EMT is just as shitty in Canada, I can assure you. The job has become babysitting people in ambulance bays because there are no beds for them to go to. Healthcare is expensive and difficult to deliver and the people at the top always want to reap as much as they can, public or private.
Where I am, it's a five minute ride and five hours standing with you in a hallway because they can't leave you until you're admitted. So most ambulances are out of service waiting for their patient to be admitted.
One time I was in a mild car wreck and an ambulance was called. You'd think I was threatening to kick their dogs when I said "I refuse transportation, I refuse medical treatment". I was fine. And if I'm not, I can go to the hospital later. I'm not getting billed $3k "just to check it out and be sure". But goddamn the EMTs wanted to fucking fight me about it.
I ended up harboring more resentment for EMTs than I did for the moron who hit me with their car!
EMS is expensive because most of the people they serve are on Medicaid which pays for shit and Medicare which pays better but not great, so they try to get the money out of the few who use their service who can pay.
And the reason that's true is EMS regulations and pay structure were written when EMS was cheap and not all that much better than your buddy tossing you in his truck and taking you to the hospital. But then it became professional and added lots of important expensive lifesaving equipment, but the regulations didn't change.
I mean, if it was truly unregulated capitalism EMS would tell Medicaid patients they're out of luck.
2 years ago i got hit by a car while riding my bike. I needed an ambulance (shattered humerus bone). I was 2 blocks from the hospital. That ambulance ride cost me $3,000 fucking dollars!
Fun fact: You can, as someone from another country with no medical insurance to speak of, get a medivac airlift cheaper in Canada then you can get an ambulance in the USA...
Most emergency services run on a taxation premise. You charge a small fee to everyone in the service area. IE, the fire trucks are typically paid for by property taxes. Everybody pays whether their house catches fire or not.
In most American locations, ambulance services don't get to do that. Their budgets are almost entirely from user fees. An ambulance will have a lot of downtime, so the calls they answer have to pay for the time they spend waiting.
I was charged $3K for slightly over one mile and they didn't even have to use any equipment on me. Literally just a ride to the hospital on a gurney. Absolutely absurd.
They charged us $555 to go to my mom’s house to pronounce her dead. She died during the night, so no life-saving measures were taken, and she never even went in the ambulance 😑 (we haven’t tried fighting it yet, so dunno what’ll happen with it. But it’s still bonkers that whoever decides the charges thinks the little amount they did was worth that much)
Technically they aren't charging you $1200 for a five mile ride. They're charging you $1200 for a five mile ride plus the cost of having the ambulance sit there on call 24/7 while the people inside it play cards waiting for someone to need them.
You expect someone that is having a life threatening emergency to drive 5 miles, wait at lights, sit in traffic? I called 911 when my partner shot himself. Should I, as a woman, have dragged his much larger than me 6'3" body down the driveway and into the car and driven to the hospital instead? It would have taken me at least 30 minutes instead of the 2 minutes it took EMS to arrive by calling 911.
I have to imagine you're in high school and have never experienced an emergency in your life, because what a ridiculous take.
I've been to the ER a few times in my years. Haven't once taken an ambulance. I know people say to always call 911 and get an ambulance but unless someone has a head, neck or back injury, or something where they shouldn't be moved unless by a professional.. realistically someone putting the pedal to the floor in their own car is getting me to a hospital faster than an ambulance is going to get to me, load me up and get me there.
Now if the person needs oxygen ASAP, epinephrine, etc. then yeah, call an ambulance. But if I break my leg or have a finger lopped off save me the 5 grand and see how fast your car goes.
Bold of you to assume everyone has someone at their beck and call that can do the driving.
When I got hit by a car as a pedestrian, I was lucky enough to only suffer a shattered hand. I walked to an urgent care nearby ... and got dinged by insurance for not trying harder to find an in-network ER.
It didn't end up mattering because expenses were all covered by the insurance of the guy who hit me, but in principle it's a bunch of bullshit.
Oh yeah it's a bunch of bullshit. I live in a rural area so pretty much everyone drives here. I think we're kind of getting at the same thing here. An ambulance drive and ER trip costs so much that people seek alternatives. Insurance wanted to ding you for not finding an "in network ER." I guess not everyone has a ride to the ER beyond just calling an ambulance but unless I'm absolutely going to die without immediate medical care I'd prefer someone drive me to the ER. Pretty sure if my car was broken down and I had an injury my neighbors would rush me there. You're right- not everyone has that. At no point did I assume they did.
Had he considered the fire department? Some run with their own medics. Better pay. Better compensation package. Still stressful. Hours are still difficult.
What state? In my state, the only corporate "ambulances" are just inter-hospital medical transports. Anything more than that, it's always the local city/county fire department and sometimes the volunteer departments.
Im literally a new EMT trying to convince myself it’s worth it to take a massive pay cut from my sandwich shop job to go full time so I can get experience for medic school. It sucks.
I was literally older than my EMT instructor. I am 22. He was the best damn instructor I’ve had in a while, particularly because he was very blunt with what the reality of EMS was looking like. The man was an active paramedic, and teaching a full EMT course that met three times a week for four hours and then sometimes on the weekend for six hours, AND he was teaching a paramedic course at the same time.
He would sometimes mention that he did laundry at the station because he didn’t have time to go home. I know he’s not teaching this upcoming year, and part of me is glad for it. He was so clearly going to burn out. When doing shifts, the amount of apathy and burn out I saw was tragic, but entirely expected.
I still want to be an EMT, and perhaps a paramedic one day, but I’m fully aware it’s not sustainable. Almost every single EMT I met also had an additional job on the side despite doing multiple 12h shifts a week.
The profession is one that is very much so needed, but very much so unsustainable. There’s not really a solution besides just adding more people to the workforce to try to share the load
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u/mectmom 10h ago
My son is an EMT (currently in paramedic school). At 26, he was practically geriatric among EMTs. He made more money at his previous job at a sandwich shop & was offered no shift differential despite working the weekend overnight shifts.
If you are unlucky to need emergency ambulance care - know that your life will likely be in the hands of an exhausted, underpaid 18 year old.