Heck, I’m worried about EMS right here in ‘Merica. My area is serviced by Air Evac Lifeteam. For $99 a year, I’m covered if my insurance won’t cover transport.
Really, I want to make it easier for an EMT-Basic to call in a chopper.
While I appreciate this in the "quality of life improvement' perspective, kind of in the way of having all of the world's knowledge available to every single individual in their back pocket, a littler perspective is in order.
Not so long ago, if you were in a wreck, fell ill or otherwise had some other calamity happen, a couple guys in white coats showed up, and tossed you in the back of a station wagon to the hospital. There was zero care given at the scene or on the way, other than to check that they had all the parts, and if you had a pulse, so they could drive to the morgue versus the hospital.
The level of "EMTness" over the last 20-30 years is absolutely several orders of magnitude higher than it was. Even rural locals have rigs that would blow the mind of any paramedic from 25 years ago. Now here we are worried about if we're going to have to "pay for the helicopter".
Yea, I get it. It's the 21st century, and every home was supposed to have an autodoc, in case you skinned your knee flying your jet pack. But yea, no.
BTW, most of that kind of coverage is in line with the hottest business of the 2020s: insurance harvesting.
As an aside, I happened to over hear a conversation from a Canadian who had moved to the states. Ordinary fellow, not political, just matter of fact, and he was discussing with his seat mate the logistics of living in the US. She was traveling into the US for work on a visa. His advice of how to navigate life in the US was all pretty good "find the small bakery in town if you can", "buy a solid car, don't worry about size, gas is cheap", and about a half dozen other "good to know" items.
He was not complementary of the health system in Canada, at all (nor the overall cost of living, but that's a topic for the Lav), so it definitely got me thinking about evac back to the states.
