Stranger covers fee for man in agony

[Lilith7]

I wouldn't be surprised if he'd had to - apparently they're no longer free or so I heard. Seems pointless to charge for that - whatever do they do if someone dies in the ambulance & can't be charged.

If its an accident there is no ambulance fee. It's paid by ACC

Cheers for that; do you know if there's any surcharge on that?

---

On face value it looks pretty bad but since it's Stuff reporting I take it with a grain of salt. I no longer trust Stuff's "woe is me" stories after seeing a couple where I knew either the people or the background and saw how much they twist things.

But, in the bigger picture I fully agree that government funded health care should be properly covered and include basic dental care. The problems we have arise because within the public system, the practitioners are all having to run as businesses. Each one has different overheads, different costs according to what services/equipment they have paid for for their practices, how many staff they employ (business managers are expensive!) and how much overlap there is with the public hospitals creating conflict of interest.

Our health sector is woefully underfunded and mis-managed and ACC really is a problem. They do need to keep funds in reserve to cover large scale emergencies, but the profits they make from investments are obscene.

Agree - they really shouldn't be making any profit at all; all our health needs should be properly covered by our health system, & I've heard others say that removing a good many managers might not be a bad idea - definitely agree with that too.