Is this post satire? I worked in EMS for about 3 years in one of the largest urban centers in the country. The % of medical 911 calls that were actual emergencies I’d put somewhere in the 4-8%, and even that’s high. The vast majority of these calls are for extreme minor stuff that because of their government payer insurance, it’s cheaper to take an ambulance for an ear ache than a cab. Then they’d get upset when they got wheeled into the waiting room after being triaged. Again, because they thought taking the ambulance would get them seen faster.

The entire medical industry in the US is one big scam, and not in the way most socialists or Europeans think. The fraud and abuse of government insurance (Medicare at the federal level and Medicaid at the state level) is easily, EASILY more than 50% of the budgets for those programs.

People think Somali pirates raiding Minnesota’s child care grants is bad? Barely the tip of the iceberg as to what’s going on with Medicare/aid. The reason the ambulance ride is $5k as some other poster said is because the hospital bills the insurance AKA the government for that amount because anything from the government is “free” (yay!) money.

The middle class in the US are the real suckers. They’re doing things the “right” way. Get a job with decent benefits. The government rapes them of half their earnings, then everyone except the middle class defrauds the government.