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This always raises an interesting question about the concept of charging someone for a service that they did not have an opportunity to ask for or consent to un
by mathgeek 8y ago
This always raises an interesting question about the concept of charging someone for a service that they did not have an opportunity to ask for or consent to until after the fact.
On one hand, you have doctors wanting to save or improve someone's life. On the other hand, especially when death is the result despite attempts to safe the patient's life, the person/estate has now incurred a cost that was potentially undesired.
- JshWright 8y agoWe (EMS) operate under "implied consent" in those cases. If someone is incapable of consenting to treatment, we assume that they would want to treated (because that's a better failure mode than not treating someone who does want it).
- afarrell 8y agoThe issue here is that we as a society recognize different standards of consent. In the framework of Medical Consent, if someone is unconscious, then they are implicitly consenting to medical treatment[1][2]. I don't have any background in contract law besides occasionally reading /r/legaladvice, but it seems unlikely that that matches our common-law concept of consent to a contract. So where does that obligation to pay for the ambulance come from? It doesn't exist in the UK, but did it before 1948? Are there statutes in US states which create that obligation? [1] First aid training my MIT's Office of Emergency Management [2] First Aid training my St. Johns Ambulance in London.