Years ago i slid down a bannister at a dance club, caught my foot, flipped over backwards, and landed on a barstool. Having grown up poor as dirt, i knew that calling an ambulance would be at least a grand if not double that. I called an uber to take me the 15 blocks to the hospital.

Total cost was 70 bucks (10 bucks for the uber, 60 for the er copay).

The number of people here in the US who use uber as an ambulance is waaay higher than you would think.

Uber is already “Uberlance”. Most people take Ubers to the hospital unless they are literally dying (and some even then).

Unlike an ambulance, an uber driver won't be able to keep a hemodynamically unstable patient alive for a 30 minute transport.

LAFD has already called Ubers for non-emergency transport to hospitals.

There is a gigantic business called "NEMT" "Non-Emergency Medical Transport" that has been filled by taxis and rideshares for decades. I first discovered this service when I broke my leg in 2006, and Medicaid was paying for taxi vouchers so that I could travel to far-flung orthopedic appointments over the span of 9 months. Otherwise I'd be on the bus, on crutches: ouch!

So NEMT can cover a lot of use cases where people are stable and just going to PCP or specialist visits. Or even behavioral health appointments. There are now dedicated NEMT providers, like Veyo out of San Diego.

In fact, when I broke my leg, there was talk of calling an ambulance. But I was only about 3 miles from the destination hospital, and there were many wise people nearby, so several of them suggested I just call a cab and take the cab to the E.D. instead, because that was far more efficient. So that's what we did, because really, I didn't need any life support, or blood transfusion, or rescuscitation on the way there.

Since the billing SNAFU last Thanksgiving I also learned about the difference between BLS and ALS. For some reason the ambulance provider billed for ALS even though none of that was necessary. Of course, ALS costs more and bills more and probably profits them more. I should have contested this stupid account trick, but whatever. They haven't even billed me for the "co-pay" yet, so we still need to wait and see how this shakes out.