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Online usersPollWhat should the government do about ailing financial institutions? Nothing, except to back off and get out—as any Objectivist knows, intervention is treating the disease with the disease 84% Intervene judiciously—enough to avert a catastrophe that is otherwise imminent 3% Intervene massively—as it's doing 3% Nationalize the whole economy and be done with it. Bring on the USSA! 1% Something else (specify) 9% Total votes: 76
 Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell
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MP's call for huge budget to solve small problem Submitted by Kasper on Tue, 2008-07-08 01:26.
An article in the Herald today noted that the ambulance services in NZ are running low on resources. New recommendations (14) have been made that all towns with 15,000+ people are entitled to get a two crew ambulance service! "There have been reports of families of people suffering from heart attacks or witnesses at scenes of accidents being asked to drive ambulances to hospital while a paramedic helps the patient." 70 percent of all call outs are being attended by a single man crew. If your over weight make sure you live down stairs! "This may result in sub-optimal care for the patient and safety concerns for the ambulance officer," no kidding! The paternalist attitude is this, society needs it, the facts are shocking, so we are justified in throwing money at it. Never mind the details.
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"gold plated ambulances"?
40 million for 400 staff translates to $100,000 per extra staff member. If you take out extensive training, uniforms, overheads, etc, you get a salary of about $60,000-$70,000 per paramedic which seems reasonable for highly trained medical personnel doing an often stressful job.
Of course the ambulance service should be privatised / paid for by voluntary charity, but I'm not seeing huge inefficiencies in the monetary figures you describe here.
Let me tell you my perspective. One of my friends is a trained volunteer paramedic, which has required years of dedication on his part without any financial return whatsoever. From what he tells me, many calls are for pathetic barely-emergencies which could have been taken care of with a taxi to the local medical centre. But the taxi costs money, whereas the ambulance is free!
Also, ambulances are tasked with transporting people between hospitals. This is a simple job which could probably be done by a commercial taxi van and a nurse. These two things are what is taxing the resources of the ambulances.
If people were charged money - any money at all - for the service, I suspect the small number of real emergencies could easily be taken care of with the existing ambulances and staff we have now.