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This story still makes the rounds, and the result is still the same. The family chose to live in unincorporated land. They turned down fire protection when the
by yardie 4y ago
This story still makes the rounds, and the result is still the same. The family chose to live in unincorporated land. They turned down fire protection when the county offered it to them. They turned down fire protection when their insurer offered it to them. The fire department did what was required to save lives. Insurance can take care of the rest...oh, that's right.
- gambiting 4y agoHmmmm. I mean, yes, but doctors will still save your life even if you declined to buy any insurance all life long or pay taxes or whatever. I'm not sure I want the same "protect at all costs" attitude extended to buildings, but fire can definitely spread and even if they don't care about your property they might care about other places.
- JumpCrisscross 4y ago> fire can definitely spread and even if they don't care about your property they might care about other places They protected the neighbouring property.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- yamtaddle 4y ago> Hmmmm. I mean, yes, but doctors will still save your life even if you declined to buy any insurance all life long or pay taxes or whatever. ERs in the US are required to provide stabilizing care to patients who come in, even if the patient can't pay, by law. It's a law because otherwise some of them wouldn't.
- bryanlarsen 4y agoIt's also a Reagan law. So you can say that it was Reagan that introduced universal healthcare to the US.
- yamtaddle 4y agoEh, kinda, but it's not like you can walk into an ER with just any condition and get treated for free. You've got to be having pretty serious problems before they're required to do anything about it, and even then they're not required to fully treat you, just get you stable.
- Kkoala 4y agoImagine thinking that mandatory stabilizing emergency care means "universal healthcare" I hope that was a joke
- superpatosainz 4y agoThat's not what universal healthcare means.
- chadash 4y agoBut people complain about this too. No one seriously talks about not treating people in the ER with gun wounds, but Obamacare explicitly introduced the mandate that you get insurance or pay a penalty to address this very issue. Everyone is entitled to a basic level of care, but the mandate says that you should have to pay for it.
- P5fRxh5kUvp2th 4y agoit's fire, if they're ever not doing it with the same fervor then we have a problem. It's one thing to declare something too dangerous and work on containment, but what's being described here isn't that.
- vkou 4y agoThe Obamacare penalty for not buying insurance was eliminated by Trump, because reintroducing the free rider problem is a cornerstone of GOP health policy. Reinstating the penalty is going to cost political goodwill, which is why the Dems aren't doing it. Regardless of whether the penalty is or is not in place, I wouldn't recommend being poor and sick, regardless of whether you are insured, or are freeloading.
- djbebs 4y agoThere is no free rider problem.
- yamtaddle 4y agoElimination of pre-existing condition exclusions, and restrictions on which factors can be used to set pricing for policies—both wildly popular—create a free rider problem.
- dmitriid 4y agoFunny how it's a problem only in the "richest country in the world". It also pales in comparison to the burden and costs of existing system in the US.
- yardie 4y agoThey will save your life. They won't treat your trick knee, erectile dysfunction, or failing vision. And they eventually put it out to prevent it spreading. Just not with the same fervor of preventing property damage.
- flutas 4y ago> And they eventually put it out to prevent it spreading. Reading the article, that's not true. They watered down the fence line to protect someone else's land. > Firefighters did eventually show up, but only to fight the fire on the neighboring property, whose owner had paid the fee. > "They put water out on the fence line out here. They never said nothing to me. Never acknowledged. They stood out here and watched it burn," Cranick said. So to your examples... > They will save your life. They won't treat your trick knee, erectile dysfunction, or failing vision. It would be closer to the story if it was "they won't save you, but they'll spray down everyone else with a disinfectant to protect them from your disease."
- monkmartinez 4y agoFunny, we get called for much less than a hurt knee and failing vision via 911 every day. I don't have a choice other to send them to the ER if that is what they want. I recently went to a call where the young man thought he took too much "extenze"... Long story short, we checked vitals and asked if he wanted to be seen at ER for further evaluation. "Nah man, I got work to do now... just thought I was gonna die for a second." Anxiety and Panic... number one call type.
- rhacker 4y agoMy wife called for me because I accidentally drank my mouthwash. I couldn't speak and technically couldn't breath for a minute. And I would have been fine, but the bottle said to call poison control (or something - this was 10 years back) if ingested. So my wife called while I was wheezing. By the time the ambulance arrived I was totally fine... sorry about that too
- smnrchrds 4y ago> They will save your life. They won't treat your trick knee, erectile dysfunction, or failing vision. I thought in the US, hospitals were only required to stabilize, not treat, non-paying patients. For example, if someone has cancer, they are not required to perform surgery or chemotherapy, just stabilize their symptoms at the moment.
- TeMPOraL 4y agoGoing by the linked article, they did care about neighboring property (whose owner paid the fee in advance), so they controlled the spread.
- LarryMullins 4y ago> I mean, yes, but doctors will still save your life even if you declined to buy any insurance all life long or pay taxes or whatever So will firefighters. They'll save your life to the best of their ability, no matter any contracts, payments, taxes, etc. Saving your house is another matter.
- monkmartinez 4y agoNumber one priority on any emergency scene. Life safety... my crew comes first, but I have taken some serious risk to save people. Once the humans and animals are safe, everything else is less concerning. Risk a lot to save a lot. Most "things" can be replaced. My crew takes great pride in saving homeowners animals these days as we now have some tools to help post smoke/heat exposure (Cyanokit and O2).
- flandish 4y agoAdding a second reply with same sentiment. I am also a firefighter, and my main “assignment” over the years has been search/rescue. We’ll always risk to reward. But more and more the phase after life saving is trending toward “surround and drown” - not that I want to fight like detroit in the 2010’s, but yes we do make a call sometimes to stop risking when lives are all confirmed safe.
- elliottkember 4y agoThank you (both) for your service to the community.
- bombcar 4y agoThere’s also a point where a structure is a total loss even if the “damage doesn’t look so bad from out here” at which point letting it burn as long as other buildings aren’t in danger may be the safest thing to do.
- fakedang 4y ago[flagged]
- zehaeva 4y agoThis actually hasn't always been the case. In fact Hospitals were not required to treat you until 1986, which was part of the COBRA act. Prior to that there was a large practice of "Patient Dumping" where a hospital would kick you out if they found out they you couldn't pay for your treatment. Hospitals in the US would literally let you die out side the ER doors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_and_Active_Labor_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_an...
- ghufran_syed 4y agoNot true. An emergency department in the US is obligated to provide life-saving care, as are EMS services and hospital doctors if the ER doc thinks you have an immediately life threatening condition . But a random oncologist has no obligation to treat you if you have a life-threatening cancer, unless you go to an ER and they determine that your condition is immediately life-threatening (say, a perforated bowel). Then the surgeon will treat you enough that you are not inmediately dying, but they are not obligated to say, remove an underlying cancer if it’s not causing immediately life threatening problems
- gambiting 4y agoWell, quite obviously I meant emergency care, since I'm comparing it to a burning building.
- citilife 4y agoThen you protect the insured buildings, not really sure why it's an issue? The same logic could apply to police... what if all the crime is coming from an unincorporated part of town? Do you just go and start policing it (kind of like an invading army occupying)? Or do you erect borders / station patrol cars near key locations?
- tedunangst 4y agoUsual response is the city annexes the land and starts policing it.
- db48x 4y agoYou call the county sheriff. Sheriffs and courts were the original reason why counties exist, and why there aren't any parts of the country that exist outside of a county, while there are quite a lot of people living outside of any incorporated city.
- kortilla 4y agoSaving burning buildings with no people in them is still a risk to the firefighters’ lives. Why go through that when the owners explicitly declined the protection repeatedly?
- Spooky23 4y agoSort of. They will save you from an acute emergency, stabilize you, then dump you into a care home with inadequate care or to the street as appropriate, where you play the long game of succumbing to whatever ails you.
- fatbird 4y agoThe municipal fire department's insurer told them that they would not cover injuries sustained while fighting fires on uninsured homes, which was the final straw for the fire department. The FD had tried for years to find a workable solution and failed because the people in the unincorporated part of the county just didn't want to pay for fire services. IIRC, the county had tried three times in the previous decade to pass taxes to either fund the municipal FD or set up their own; three times the residents of the unincorporated part voted against it. The FD had tried retroactively charging owners, and spent more on collections than they'd earn.
- paxys 4y agoDoctors will save your life, not your property. It's the exact same in this case.
- LorenPechtel 4y agoNo. Hospitals will do what they have to *against immediate threats*. They will not do what's needed in the bigger picture if they are not paid. You don't get the chemotherapy etc if you can't pay.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dantheman 4y agoIf it wasn't a gov agency, something could have been worked out on the spot. Ask them if they want to pay the full price, what is it $10k, $20k?. If you don't pay, you'd have the lowest priority. But there is no reason other than bureaucracy that they couldn't have handled it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- s0rce 4y agoDo people have that cash lying around, what guarantee would you have that people would pay? Maybe you can take the deed to the house that you saved?
- jefftk 4y agoSeems like the agreement could be backed with the threat of a lien on your property.
- triceratops 4y agoThe property that just burned down?
- michaelt 4y agoThe fire brigade would borrow the technique of Marcus Licinius Crassus and buy your property as it burned, improve its value by extinguishing the fire, then rent it back to you.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- jefftk 4y agoIf the firefighters can't keep it from burning to the ground, I doubt you want to be paying for them to do anything. Even then, there's still the value of the land.
- HWR_14 4y agoThe family accepted fire protection from their insurer and claim they forgot to pay the $75 fee, not declined to do so. It's possible they opted out, it's also possible it was an oversight. Certainly, the more human thing would be to make opting in/out more explicit and handle a late payment by sending it to collections (or reminder notifications) instead of just turning service off. Or do you have any evidence they actively opted out of the $75 payment?
- fatbird 4y agoA reporter on the scene spoke to the homeowner, who said he didn't pay the fee because he thought he could just pay after, like happened previously. He literally thought he could get away with not paying unless a fire happened. It's a textbook case of moral hazard. I discussed the case a lot at the time it happened, and it never came out that he "forgot" to pay the fee. It was very clear at the time that he thought he didn't need to and they'd put out the fire anyway.
- bombcar 4y agoPeople do the same with AAA - don’t pay to renew until you need a tow and pay the renewal over the phone. I think they’re a bit smarter now and make you pay for the years you skipped.
- grogenaut 4y agoThat's hard as I wouldn't back pay but my insurance company goes back and forth on doing roadside depending on if you have comprehensive and has changed the rule and rates to be more or less competitive with AAA. When it's cheaper I use my I aurance, when not AAA. If they made me back pay I wouldn't use them. But I generally don't just do the sign up and tow immediately.
- bombcar 4y agoI think it’s only when you want a tow same day - renewing a failed account has a three day waiting period if you don’t pay the rush fee.
- mushbino 4y agoConsidering the location, I imagine they couldn't afford it.
- cryptonector 4y agoJust FYI for all those in the thread who don't know, unincorporated doesn't mean "no taxes, no fees". Generally the county provides services (Sheriffs and Constables, fire dept.), and ambulances tend to all be private anyways. If you're in the middle of nowhere then you may have to join a co-op for helicopter medical, and the nearest fire station may be too far to save your house in a fire. If you're in the middle of nowhere you're probably also on unincorporated land, but the challenges of being in the middle of nowhere have nothing to do with the land being unincorporated.
- tlavoie 4y agoNot quite the same thing, but there are certainly places where people will choose to live, without conventional fire department coverage. I live on an island on Canada's coast, where there is a fire department, funded as a local improvement area. It covers ~ 90% of the population, on a much smaller proportion of the island's area. People do live in some of these less-accessible part of the island, but it's outside of the department's service area. Fires in other areas are officially the responsibility of the regional fire service, like for forest fires. Our department might go on certain calls, especially life safety, but will typically keep some people and vehicles back in our own service area in case calls come in there as well. I think the term for people outside of the district is "self-insured", because nobody else will be able to assist quickly.