“The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a bill for ‘services rendered’ is a good guy with a bill for ‘services rendered’.” 
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Whereas the presumptions you attributed are extra double plus ingenuous?
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Know your place, Citizen! The emergency responders are our overlords. protecting our safety, and must be allowed to exact whatever tribute they demand!
And the more they pull this sort of stuff, the more that belief will get entrenched. We already have people in need of rescue hiding from their rescuers, lying to them, and even assaulting them for fear of enormous bills - even in jurisdictions where charging for rescue is forbidden by law.
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When I hear about things like this, I’m frankly amazed that the USA manages to maintain the illusion of civilisation at all.
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WTAF?!
This is probably privilege speaking, but I cannot imagine a scenario when I’d choose the agony of self-evacuation over a SAR bill.
Something is horribly wrong.
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And these problems are only going to get worse as the United States continues to rely on private for-profit companies that often deliver poorer services than public responders. Today’s NY Times has a interesting story about private equity firms running EMT/ambulances in its business section.
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I had an accident last summer where I sprained a knee on a solo trek about 15 miles from the highway. I thought about lighting my PLB, and then said to myself, “what will the rangers do if they come get me? This isn’t a great area for helicopter ops, so they’ll most likely put an Ace wrap on it, feed me painkillers and walk me out. I can do that.” So I did. Took me about a day and a half. It wasn’t exactly pleasant, but I think it fell a notch or two short of ‘agony.’
Of course, if I had called, it would have been in the news that I was ill-prepared (how, exactly, is unclear, but they’d say that), in a wilderness area, lost (huh? I knew exactly where I was and the evacuation route I’d use), and OMG disregarding all rules of safety by TRAVELING ALONE! (How, exactly, having companions would have kept me from going arse-over-teakettle on the wet rock is unclear.) And then they’d go on to how my foolishness burdened the taxpayers.
That’s the narrative that reporters understand, so they’d make the situation fit it. Trying to understand why someone might want to make a 130-mile solo trek through the Adirondacks, and on top of that to grasp that such a person might have the equipment and skills to do it safely, is much harder, and they wouldn’t get far by challenging their readers with that. It sells more commercials to pander to, “well, I’d never try a damnfool stunt like that! There oughta be a law!”
I was more interested in just getting home and avoiding that particular embarrassment than in saving money. In any case, all’s well that ends well: I was getting about with a cane for about six weeks, but hiking again well before the snow came.
My PLB is not something that I see as a lifeline. I carry it for the searchers, not for myself. Search is the dangerous and expensive part of search-and-rescue. Rescue is trivial by comparison. A PLB takes virtually all the ‘search’ out of the equation. I don’t expect that anyone is going to get there in time to save me if I’m hiking a 60-mile section with one dirt road crossing at the 18-mile mark (as I was on that trip). It’s just too remote. But I know that if I don’t come back, they’re coming whether I want it or not, and I want to make their job as safe as possible.
I’m really too old for it now, but I’ve done volunteer SAR in the past. I’d be seriously annoyed if I learnt that the state was charging for my services. They didn’t pay me, didn’t buy my gear, didn’t pay the tuition for my training or my exam fees, and even required that I carry insurance to indemnify them in case I hit someone with my truck while driving to the trailhead. The rhetoric of “stupidity burdens the taxpayer” - I answer with what a much older and wiser WFR once said when hearing the same thing: “hey, everyone’s stupid sometimes, it’s just that we mostly get away with it.”
And this is definitely privilege speaking. Only the privileged ever get to take such a vacation. And living in a society that is civilized enough to offer rescue services is most definitely a great privilege.
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SAR is for saving lives, not for avoiding pain. If you can make it out without them, you do.
From @kennykb’s link:
Climber hobbles 3,000’ down mountain without rescue - Whatcom County, Washington
A climber from Canada descending Mt Baker had an accident at 9500’, fracturing her ankle. Two nearby climbing physicians pronounced it likely fractured. When she asked them about a charge for rescues in the US, they told her it could be perhaps $10,000. She decided she couldn’t afford to be rescued. She took some pain medication, tightened up her plastic boot real tight and slowly hobbled down the mountain. Alerted by another climber with a cell phone, members of Bellingham Mountain Rescue met her at the 6500’ level. When told that the rescue team doesn’t charge for rescues she collapsed – admitting to considerable pain. The US Navy used one of its rescue helicopters in this real emergency to train its crew to rescue marines, sailors, soldiers and airmen awaiting rescue in mountains anywhere they operate.
So, should she have refused the rescue because she was still “able” to descend herself? That’s the type of scenario I was referring to.
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I’m not going to armchair quarterback that particular case, because I don’t personally know the terrain she was in and what effect her injury had on the danger of the descent.
But I do have friends who’ve crawled substantial distances through the bush on broken bones, and I’ve dragged myself through some sketchy situations while fairly well scraped and battered.
The bush rescue norms I’m familiar with are as I said: if you are in a life-threatening situation, call for rescue. If you are in a non life-threatening situation [1], suck it up and get yourself home.
It may be in part a regional and generational thing; my wilderness habits date from pre-cellphone pre-PLB days [2], and the regions I walk in are often not places that have dedicated rescue crews. Population density is pretty low in my part of the world.
As a matter of bushwalking etiquette and ethics, you don’t tie up scarce SAR resources and put other people’s lives at risk just to spare yourself discomfort [3]. But, to be clear, this is not an issue that should be decided by how much money anyone has.
[1] Defined by situation as well as injury. A painful-but-nonlethal situation on flat land may be life-threatening on more difficult terrain.
[2] Which meant that it was often a couple of days before anyone would notice you were overdue, so planning for self-rescue when possible was highly advisable.
[3] Which implies a possible recalibration if you’re in a spot where SAR resources are not scarce and deploying them does not significantly endanger the rescuers. I suspect that this may be more likely to be the case in wealthier, more densely populated countries such as the US.
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From my medical training in Santa Clara County, everything is (nearly) gratis until it becomes a ride in the ambulance.
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I believe that’s how it is in Long Beach, California, too.
There are a lot of expensive things I would love to have the right to.
Backcountry rescue is not among them. Wilderness is not safe.
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Do you believe labor and expertise is of no value?
While abstractly what you are saying makes sense, the travel, equipment, and time of these emergency technicians could certainly add up to the amount described.
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In our town, the taxes pay for this kind of assessment by EMTs. As matter of fact, the voters just approved a one percent sales tax increase to help restore funding for emergency services. Only if someone need to be transported do they bill for this. I would concede that having to stabilize and transport a person would be labor intensive and worthy of a bill. However, a pulse check and a bottle of water so that the gentleman can clean his own wound isn’t what I would call labor intensive nor worthy.
My mother was a nurse and she helped out with a major car accident when I was a child. I remember her telling me how it’s both an ethically and morally responsibility for doctors and nurses to do this for free. For public EMTs, taxes pay their salary so they’re getting reimbursed.
I linked to today’s NY Times article and you should read the section about private companies “shopping” for supplies via hospitals. Apparently, patients are being billed for items that were “free” in the first place.
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Somebody tell this guy he needs to set up a gofundme for the ticket. He’ll walk away with thousands.
Edit: get a friend or relative to set it up.
Your town’s voters are obviously heretics against the gospel of austerity. The true devotee would say that the system should fund itself by charging everyone who calls in an emergency, is a subject at an emergency response, or is suspected of needing emergency assistance. (The last because it takes the resources away from those who might need them more. It’s the same as a false alarm.) Require people to carry insurance against accident reporting. Don’t make the taxpayers bear the burden.
Somewhere in that narrative, we lose the idea that there are things we pay for as a society because that’s the cost of living in a civilized society.
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I believe it is of considerable value, and the fraction of my taxes that go to supporting it is money well spent. Particularly since the system you appear to be arguing for creates a perverse incentive not to assist at an emergency.
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Reagan and Thatcher, with the “markets can do no wrong, government can do no right” narrative set the stage for it, and now the US is deep in the attitude of “doing anything as a group without money being the motive is heretical”.
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I’m not arguing for that system? I’m saying that the price of examination “and a bottle of water” (unsubsidized by investments in our health infrastructure) was not as insane as it may appear, even if the system itself is insane.
