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Every single ambulance service in the UK has begun investing in everything from wider stretchers to specialized ambulances to better serve the morbidly obese sect.
I'm talking double wide ambulances with reinforced lift gates, heavy duty wheel chairs, lifting cushions and a hoist.
So put down that twinkie tons of fun, 'cause you're running up health care costs in more ways than your diabetes treatments...
THIS is whybritspaytaxes.
read more:Fat patients 'prompts ambulance fleet revamp'(bbc)
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6 comments:
Oh my. This is quite a problem when the ambulance sector re-designs things. I wonder why the U.S. hasn't done this yet??? Remember when people in the 400 lb. range used to be a RARE thing????
It's strange to live in a world where a few people have so much food and others have so little....famine and obesity on the same planet.....very very very strange.
Gotta love how the Brits don't sugar coat things....just calls people fat. I can hear the snotty british accent too. No sugar coating
Anon, I can only imagine this is very widespread in the U.S. This is just one news story, I haven't investigated any further.
This is a particular burden to the Brits because most of their ambulance fleet is maintained by the National Health Service.
I hope that in the U.S. most of the ambulance companies forced to invest in this are private services able to charge more.
Either way, a large portion still comes out of U.S. taxpayer wallets via medicare.
Anon, Indeed, I debated some fat word play.
I feel morbidly obese is a much more potent term.
Ah, so true. Guess this would be further evidence to privatize the whole medical system?
I have to ask...why is an obese persons life worth less (valued by costing more in order to accomodate them whether through ambulances or extra airplane seats)? Is it irrational for society to enforce physical conformity? Will we next charge extra for tall people and their need for leg & head room? And short people as well?
This is a difficult issue because it's a fine line between discrimination and accommodation, especially when using economic metrics.
Anon, the added expenses in taking care of people who are larger than life have nothing to do with the value of their lives. IMO there is no fine line here.
If you want something stronger, you have to make it stronger. If you want something larger, you have to make it larger. To make things better, you have to build them better, and that costs more in materials and process time.
Additionally, if a service cannot easily afford more than 2 salaried EMTs per ambulance, then they will have to install a hoist to help them lift 500 pound patients into the ambulance. Much like the expenses to make bigger and stronger ambulances and stretchers, this hoist is an additional expense.
We have long since determined the most affordable way to make an ambulance that works in most cases. We've all seen the crane and flatbed truck images of some of the over-tonners on Oprah, and we've all agreed that these extraordinary circumstances require something more than the ambulance we might expect to have show up at our emergency.
Because exceptionally large people need exceptionally different services, their care costs more.
Not because we hate fat people, but because reality calls.
(show me a 10' tall guy and I'll show you a situation where a standard ambulance probably won't work. Also, I thought I remember reading that airlines are already charging extra for extra leg room...)
Its not conformity, its statistics.
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