Given you find this is _normal_ for a six mile ambulance ride: "and $11,670 as a “base rate.”"
What on earth would you consider normal for a helicopter ride from Exeter to London?
That's roughly 150 miles as the crow flies. Pilot, co-pilot and a medic, minimum crew for say 1.5 hours. Each way, so 300 miles of fuel and aircraft lifetime and three hours of crew cost, not to mention ground crew etc.
My dad got that on the firm when the shit hit the fan and he needed to be seen by specialists in the Royal Brompton and Royal Devon and Exeter decided that was his best shot at life. That was 15 years ago.
Anyway, the OP's bill looked pretty normal until the 11,000 base rate nonsense. How can that possibly be justified?
> How can that possibly be justified?
They can't make money on some customers (medicare/insurance), so they have to make up the difference however they can. In practice this means screwing over the people who have assets to seize.
This thread is filled with strong arguments that ambulence operators do make money with medicare.
But even more, it's completely false that the reason an ongoing, working business charges a huge price to some people is that some other people are taking money from them. A business charge people huge prices when it can. Businesses make as much money as they can.
It is true that what health care providers charge individuals tends to be their "opening offer" to insurance companies so they do make this exact argument "we gotta make all our profits on you 'cause everyone else is denying us" but that doesn't make such arguments any more reasonable.