To think if you have to call an ambulance because you have injured yourself drunk then ....

[stoppinchingthedummy]

you should have to pay for it??

I may be being unreasonable but after an incident i witnessed this weekend it suddenly dawned on me that some people get so blind drunk ,fall over ,bang their head or whatever they may do and then an ambulance is called and they are taken to a&e all at the tax payers expense and more to the point taking paramedics away from someone who might be desperatly ill needing it?

Add elderly peope who don't live on ground floor accomodation or bungalows and are injured on steps to that list. They knew the fucking risk.

moyorquimby

Last time I had to call an ambulance for DD (4) as she was having a severe asthma attack, was speaking to the ambulance driver. He said after he dropped us off at Children's Hospital, there was a call in the city center after a drunken episode. I asked him if he felt sympathy, and he said, 'I'm British. It's part of my culture...'

The Exchequer pulls in around £8-10 billion every year on revenues from alcohol. Thank you drinkers. Alcohol related illness/death costs the NHS £3 billion per annum. That's a net gain for the government. Given the sterling contribution drinkers make to the economy it does seem unfair to demand they pay for the use of an ambulance when they get pissed and fall over. Surely they should get the express limo service with frequent flyer points, whilst tee-totallers requiring an ambulance should have to swipe their debit card to activate the blue lights.

'I actually think that we are a nation of drunks precisely because we have a NHS, '

Obviously not a student of British history . . .

I Thought you did have to pay, i got run over by a car when i was 17 (wasn't seriously hurt) and my parents were billed for the call out after treatment.

Also know of someone who was in labour and called ambulance out, she was sent home but had to phone for ambulance again and was charged for the initial call out.

I always wondered if this applied to everyone or only in certain non emergancy cases. Or maybe it's just where i live.

What about pregnant women? As a man I will never be pregnant should I foot the bill because someone else decided to get pregnant? Or seeing as that argument can quite neatly be shot down by pointing out the fact that anyone I impregnate may avail of the service. What about the willfully childless or celebate? should they foot the bill because others choose to have kids or risk pregnancy through sexual activity?

Yeah one of the reasons I left nursing in the NHS was the drunks. I got so sick of getting beat up by disorientated violent drunks. I got sick of getting beat up by middle aged men who were demented because they pickled their brains with decades of alcohol abuse. I got sick of seeing drunks screaming at A&E staff and trashing the place because they were "having to wait" meanwhile the patients with heart problems and burns were getting neglected. Once I saw an alcoholic get jumped by 4 doctors and a Nurse. He was confused and tried to attack the old lady in the cubicle across from him because she was on a nebuliser and he "didn't like the noise". It took 7 staff in total to hold the guys down.

It's not just "drunks" or should I see people who enter the hospital drunk. There are also tons and tons of current and former alcoholics who have dementia like symptons because of how screwed up their livers are as a result of years of heaving drinking. They get extremely aggressive and violent. They hallucinate.

Many come in for detox, smash the place up while they are in, attack staff, get discharged and are back in a week later for another go at detox. Every other week all year long. Well used to call them our "frequent flyers". We used to refer to one as the boneman since he would break at least one staff member's bone with every admission.

IloveTiffany- Smokers don't get aggressive, disorientated and violent as a result of their habit okay? Well not as bad anyway.

and neither do pregnant women.

we were actually saying a few weeks ago that all hospitals should have alcoholic wards. Currently these people get admitted to the general wards for detox attacking and terrorising the other patients. Sometimes we have more detoxers than medical patients on a medical ward.

I will never forget the night we had a man dying of cancer, whole family around the bed. Guess what they got to listen to all fucking night long? The detoxer in the next bay smashing the place up, shouting, hallucinating, throwing drip stands through windows and a nurse screaming when he grabbed her and locked himself and her in a loo.

Haven't had to with any of it on such a grand scale since I left the UK nursing.

you came out of a pregnant woman though, mayor, you're not entirely unconnected to the process.

Why don't we go the whole hog mayorquimby and penalise everyone for being born. I mean if you had never been born then you would not need the NHS. Actually make that conceived.

What I would like to see is automatic fines for patients who attack staff and other patients and for patients who become so verbally agresive they they threaten to follow staff home and make the staff member watch while the patient murders their family (as a patient did say to me).

One night of smoking is not going to run a high risk of instant death for either the smoker or others where as drinking alcohol potentially could and not just for those in the vacinity of the initial act of drinking.

Mayorquimby is pointing out the inherent problems of the opening argument by extending the premises to the absurd.

S/he's being funny, folks. Well, funny-serious. Don't yell at him/her.

OP- YABU.

YANBU.

When ds used to have to stay in hospital there would be an occasional teenager admitted because they were drunk. Quite often the sister in charge of the ward would refuse to admit the drunk kid to the childrens ward and he would be sent to an adult general ward. When I saw her recently I asked if it still happened, she told me that five to ten years ago they might get one or possibly two drunk children every fortnight, these days there is always 2 or 3 every Friday and Saturday night. :(

Not really about ambulances but a sad indictment of our drinking culture and the lack of personal and family responsibility.

'Not really about ambulances but a sad indictment of our drinking culture and the lack of personal and family responsibility.'

And also of the availability of cheap alcohol, the lack of strict and enforceable laws (and the resources to support this) on public intoxication and underage drinking and 24-hour licensing.

Britain has, for much of its history, had a culture of heavy drinking/drunkeness. As this will likely not change, then it needs to be policed, very, very heavily.

I don't want my controlled drinking to be policed and legislated. Plenty of people don't drink to fall over or black out. Legislating against the minority of absolute idiots penalises the majority of people who like a bottle of wine or a gin and tonic.

Well there is opening the arguement to things like obesity,smokers etc but charging a pregnant women for getting pregnant and needing treatment...that is fecking absurd and not an arguement at all ...If those of you who came on the post after i had posted to say i was being a little u to open it up to drunk people when there is many more examples had read what i said then you would see this -

alouiseg - that is terribly sad isnt it :(

'Legislating against the minority of absolute idiots penalises the majority of people who like a bottle of wine or a gin and tonic.'

Yet compelling people to pay for ambulance/treatment from drink-related injury requires legislation to be put in place for that to become so.

If you're a person who likes the odd drink, though, and is over-age, then the stricter policing and penalties of underage, public and 24-hour drinking don't affect you, anyhow.

YANBU. But I guess you can't pick and choose - it is either free for all or costs for all. We got a nearly $500 charge for the ambulance that collected my husband when he had a stroke last year. It taught us not to ever call an ambulance without a true emergency (which of course that was). Last week when I needed to go to ER with a ruptured ovarian cyst I drove myself to save us $500...

So I think free ambulances on balance are better than paying, but I can see it must be irritating.

YABU people would hesitate before phoning an ambulance.

Stricter licensing laws and increased taxes will impact on non problem drinkers. The first thing any govt does when it wants to be seen to doing something is tax it.

Hit the drunks not the drinkers.

'Stricter licensing laws and increased taxes will impact on non problem drinkers. '

How? I come from a place where you have to visit a liquor store during set hours to buy booze, you're heavily identified and it's not cheap.

So if you want to drink you stump up, it's not like it's a necessity.

Taxing my Gavi di Gavi will not stop a bunch of twats buying spirits or supermarket beer to get plastered on before going out.

Licensing laws shouldn't even be necessary, people should police themselves not expect big brother to do it for them.

Then stop selling booze in supermarkets, raise the drinking age and police it more heavily. Taxing isn't the only approach.

Make public intoxication a way, way more serious crime and set up private detox centres to put them in - make people pay for their lodging there by letting the detox centres use bailiffs to collect and garner wages/dock benefits for it. Make it a crime for minors to be in possession and again, put the resources in place to make this more enforceable.

Because people will not police themselves, especially not in this country.

I think my German ex h put it best, about both America and the UK, 'In these places, if people aren't policed, they go ghetto.'