I did not know this. The ambulance situation is a shambles and wildly differs from state to state and in what your health insurance provider (if you have one) may not make you aware of. The article includes a comparison of all states’ ambulance services.
Everyone should get ambulance cover. It is affordable and directly funds the ambulance service.
It should be covered by medicare, as should essential dental
I’d vote for that but until it is the best bet is ambulance cover in Victoria. Good on Qld for showing us up.
Victoria isn’t difficult to show up, a little embarrassing when qld does it though. I have never been in a qld hospital, hopefully (for their sake) they are cleaner than victorian ones.
But you need to know whether you’ll be charged if your partner or other family member under the cover is actually covered if they die before the ambulance picks them up. The lady in the article was charged $600 because the ambulance picked up her husband from home when he had already died.
Agreed. Looks like a deceased member is a grey area. If a medical practitioner calls the ambulance then you’re covered, if you call it could be at your expense. Note this is for Ambulance Victoria and could be different in other places.
https://membership.ambulance.vic.gov.au/faqdetails?id=KA-01025
If you’re low income it’s free
In Victoria it’s $50 for a single and $110 for a family annually. Concession is free. Ambulance Victoria does good work and saves many lives, as do ambulance services everywhere.
https://membership.ambulance.vic.gov.au/faqdetails?id=KA-01021
What they’re saying is if you’re poor you might be lucky to have $100 or less a month to live on after you pay everything, where $50 a year represents ~4-5% of a poor person’s yearly income left after paying bills. It’s expensive being poor… They can’t afford things like this and end up stuck with a bigger bill.
For me that’s like paying $2600 a year.
If you are on concession it’s free. If yours a full paying family it’s $110 per year.