"Don Y" wrote in message

stuff snipped

I am betting it's the cost. Anyone whose seen a recent ambulance bills
would be wary of the cost, even with insurance.

Woman in question had a habit of avoiding ambulance rides.
I don't know if it was the cost or the embarassment (having
neighbors seeing you carted off) or just not wanting to
have "strangers" in her house (another embarassment?).

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/he...ance-bill.html

Kira Milas has no idea who called 911, summoning an ambulance filled with
emergency medical technicians. Ms. Milas, 23, was working as a swim
instructor for the summer and had swum into the side of the pool, breaking
three teeth. Skaken, she accepted the ambulance ride to Scripps Memorial
Hospital in La Jolla, Calif. The paramedics applied a neck brace as a
precaution.

A week later she received a bill for the 15-minute trip: $1,772.42. Though
her employer’s workers’ compensation will cover the bill, she still was
stunned at the charge. “We only drove nine miles and it was a
non-life-threatening injury,” she said in a phone interview. “I needed
absolutely no emergency treatment.”

Medicare, the insurance program for the elderly, does tabulate its numbers
and has become alarmed at its fast-rising expenditures for ambulance rides:
nearly $6 billion a year, up from just $2 billion in 2002 . . .

Some [insurers] will grant coverage if the destination was an emergency
room, regardless of the patient’s status, but others may require admittance
to the hospital as evidence that the condition was serious . . .

But when an ambulance arrives, sick patients or injured people like Ms.
Milas, often feel they have little choice but to get in, unaware of the
potential price tag . . .

Some companies even charge hundreds of dollars extra if a friend or relative
rides along with an injured patients.

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Bobby G.