Fire Department Charges for Accident Response

[TinEar]

I saw the following item on the web site of Channel 6 TV (WKMG) in Central Florida. What do you think? Good idea? Bad idea? Rotten idea?

It will cost more to have a car accident in Winter Park, Fla., beginning Tuesday, according to Local 6 News.

The city will now charge the insurance company of the driver at fault up to $2,100 if the Winter Park Fire Department responds.

 

[BCFDengine4]

Can't BELIEVE it took this long

Actually Tin Ear, I can't BELIEVE our Boy Wonder mayor didn't come up with this one himself. LOL

But seriously, I see it opening up a whole can of worms...a few of the issues:

Don't taxpaying citizens already pay for emergency services?(Or is this a volunteer org.)

Some of the more labor intensive TA's are caused by unauthorized users/stolen autos...who pays then?

In the end, it will just end up being an "indirect tax" as the insurance companies will just pass along the costs to all of their policy holders and ALL of them are left holding a little bit lighter wallet.

I guess I'm trying to say my vote would definitely be in the "Bad Idea" column, just took a while to punch out that little chad!

 

[drew6553]

there's good and bad to it.

I can See EMS charging but i can't understand and i can see fire charging to respond to calls like cat in tree and some public assistance calls but charging for 10-50? damn if my department did that we be millionares but if we did that out emergency manager would guillotine the whole department

 

[TinEar]

The thing that struck me was that they are charging the insurance company rather than the individual. And that, of course, means the charges will be paid by all drivers in the form of higher insurance rates as the companies start issuing checks to the fire department. They were pretty slick doing it this way since payments will be easily forthcoming with no collection problems. I'm amazed that it's going into effect without a massive fight by the insurance companies with lots of appeals should they lose the case. Perhaps they've already gone this route but the story didn't give much detail. Personally, I think it stinks.

 

[jpm]

if the insurance company pays then they want the money, thats how it works here in illinois. myself being a firemedic and the helping stuff...now you get a bill. i'm totally against this payment but its the 2000's everyone is money hungry.

 

[allen5565]

http://www.wesh.com/news/4373387/detail.html

WINTER PARK, Fla. -- If your actions cause a car crash in the city of Winter Park, it's going to cost you.

The city approved a new set of fees, which range from $400 to $2,000, depending on how much help you need in a car wreck, WESH NewsChannel 2 reported.

The fees will be levied by the fire department.

When drivers are involved in a wreck, they often need help and need help fast. That help has always been there, at taxpayer expense, but the new fees are intended to give taxpayers a break.

Certain things on fire trucks get used up. Buckets of absorbent material are used to soak up radiator fluid spills, and medical kits have all types of medicines, bandages and IVs, and everything that is used has to be replaced.

"We found that 75 percent of the automobile accidents that we respond to in the city limits are non-city residents," said assistant fire Chief Steve Painter.

With three out of four wrecks involving people who don't pay city taxes, budgets are strained to the limits.

"Taxes basically provide the infrastructure. That's buying the equipment, the fire stations and all. The user fees that we set up are paying for the service," Painter said.

The smallest fee, $435, will be charged if no one's hurt. If people are critically injured and need to be cut out and possibly flown out, the cost will be more than $2,100. The person at fault will pay.

"They will seek reimbursement from the insurance company," Painter said.

Some feel the fees are more than justified, while others aren't thrilled about the new costs.

"I think that's why we pay taxes, for those types of services. I think that's their job," said one Winter Park resident.

"We're always looking for avenues to increase our revenue generating, to put back into the general fund," Painter said.

Painter said auto insurance policies already provide coverage for these fees so premiums shouldn't be affected.

He also said if the City Council would have had the fees in place last year, the city would have made about $130,000.

The fees are in place now.

 

[BoxAlarm187]

Charging for MVA response is nothing new at all. There are lots of pros and cons to it, but as JPM said, emergency services are forced to recoup part of their money in some fashion.

It's also correct that the insurance companies are charged, not the individual. However, you (as the individual) already pay your insurance provider for this service, whether you use it or not - it does not indicate an automatic increase in your premiums.

Think about it this way: if you have county water service at your home, do you have to pay the county a water bill? How about paying to drop your trash at the county landfill? Are these any different than paying for the FD/EMS EMS response that you might use once or twice in your life time?

Food for thought...

 

[rescue161]

It's a good way to have insurance companies charge citizens of that town more for their premiums.

What sucks is that 75% of the "accidents" are caused by non-residents.

So who wins? Insurance companies do.

That town will quickly become the highest insurance rate town in the U.S.

Insurance - The biggest legal scam ever... They charge you out the ass for YEARS and then drop you if become "high Risk". Then they fight like hell to pay you when you really need them to. SCAM!

 

[allen5565]

Off the top of my head I’d say it’s fairly naïve to assume insurance companies are going to sit by quietly and absorb any such fees without passing on to consumers the costs.

It is a novel idea, though. Possibly all city emergency response vehicles could, like tow trucks, have rate charts posted, plainly visible, offering a menu of services from which to choose. Accident victims could select how much help they feel they can afford. “I’d like the extrication and fire suppression, please, but don’t call a medivac - I’ll grab a cab to the hospital.” Perhaps it can be extended beyond auto accidents. Fire engines could be retrofitted with meters similar to those on home oil delivery trucks, allowing the city to accurately measure, and submit a bill for, how much water was used to extinguish any fires in the municipality. Like New York City cabs, a “night surcharge” could be appended to any call responded to after dusk. Police could get in on the act, too. “Gas used while idling as officer wrote ticket, $2.00; one moving citation, $0.75” “electricity for Taser blast, $3.75”

My cynicism aside, the idea that the presence of government services for which you and I pay taxes should somehow be separate and distinct from the utilization of said services is rather cynical of lawmakers. That smells a bit like an unctuous car dealer sticking an unsuspecting customer with “additional dealer prep” charges, never mentioned during the price negotiations. “Why yes, your taxes did pay to outfit our emergency services, but there’s a separate, unrelated schedule of fees if you actually need to make use of them.”

“’We're always looking for avenues to increase our revenue generating, to put back into the general fund,’ [assistant fire chief Steve] Painter said.” Does that quote strike anyone else as discordant that the assistant fire chief seems to have in mind a retail approach to life saving? When did fire fighting become a municipality’s “avenue to revenue generating”? Better idea for the Winter Park –and every other town, berg, and hamlet: have the backbone to start demanding corporate residents start paying their fair share of the tax burden. A 15-second Google search of “fortune 500” “companies” and “taxes” offers these tid-bits: http://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporate_welfare/real_tax_rates_plummet.php and this “In 2003, 275 Fortune 500 companies enjoyed an average effective federal income tax RATE OF 17.2 PERCENT…The official U.S. corporate income-tax rate is 35 percent…Forty-six of those 275 companies paid NO FEDERAL INCOME TAX AT ALL…” “Thirty-five of those companies paid NO STATE INCOME TAXES at all that year…” http://www.congress.org/congressorg/issues/alert/?alertid=7350351&content_dir=ua_congressorg

Don’t tell me the correct solution to a strapped emergency service system is to tax people for system’s mere presence and then send them a bill if the system is made use of.

 

[TinEar]

That was a great post allen5565. I found myself nodding my head up and down in agreement as I read it, that is, until you got to the part about corporate tax avoidance. Although I thoroughly disagree with negative tax rates (otherwise known as corporate welfare), I'm generally in the camp of doing away with corporate taxes altogether. That's a discussion for another time and place though. Thanks for your enjoyable input.

 

[BoxAlarm187]

Don’t tell me the correct solution to a strapped emergency service system is to tax people for system’s mere presence and then send them a bill if the system is made use of.

Very thoughtful post. I enjoy reading posts that are factual in nature.

I can name a dozen fire or EMS departments (read: municipalities, not private services) in my state that charge for services. By far, most of the billing is done for ambulance transports, but there are several that charge for fire response. Across the nation, you'll find FD's that charge in several different ways: based on number of hours committed to the incident, number of apparatus responding, equipment used on the call (hoselines, oil absorbent, Jaws of Life, etc), and others.

We often take for granted that we all live in areas that are well-supported, or have money within the community. There are many that don't. What about the areas in the midwest and south that don't even charge for their services - they require a subscription service - if you don't pay your yearly subscription to the FD, then they don't respond. I'm not talking about stuff that happened 50 years ago, there are departments that operate like this TODAY.

I propose to you this: the county in which I volunteer doesn't charge for emergency services (though most of the counties that surround us do). We're a rural/suburban community that's doesn't have any large corporate tax base. Our largest employer is a state prison, and the only national chain of anything we have is a little ol' McDonalds. We have no Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola bottling plant, or other "guaranteed" source of taxable income.

Since over 70% of our taxes go to the educational system, and we seek out alternative sources of funding, is it not fair to charge the citizens that use our system? Bake sales and gun raffles don't pay for fire engines anymore.

 

[suttles1972]

As a firefighter myself, I strongly disagree with Winter Park's manner of charging drivers, who should have insurance while driving anyway. This should be an issue between the insurance company and the department and not solely on the driver. My thinking is, if I have a blow out on a muncipal street and my blow out results to an accident with injuries, why am I responsible for the bill, when my insurance company is being paid for such services. Now if I had no insurance, well that's a different story and I can see coming after me with axes, hammers and even a rope, if deemed necessary. I look at this situation as I do cell phones and land line service contracts. Many contracts add 911 as a fee. This fee is added to your bill for the upkeep of communications equipment at your place of resident. So what's the difference with the insurance companies adjusting fees to accomodate fire departments for the replacement of it's equipment. I do not agree with this method at all. My thoughts.

 

[allen5565]

BoxAlarm187, you bring up a tremendously good point – what is a community to do (other than rely on revenue sharing from the state) when there is no source of commercial tax revue on which to rely. It hadn’t occurred to me such situations still exist, living as I do in Montgomery County, where you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting new businesses moving into the area. I will say, however, that such a situation doesn’t seem to be the case in Winter Park, FL. A little internet rummaging turned up these several sites –

http://www.ci.winter-park.fl.us/2005/govt/Fact_Sheet.pdf

http://www.city-data.com/city/Winter-Park-Florida.html

http://www.city-data.com/business/econ-Winter-Park-Florida.html


Briefly, Winter Park is a 7.3 square mile bedroom of Orlando, where roughly half the almost 27K residents have at least a bachelor’s degree and the median salary is $48,884 (yr 2000). Their General Fund in 2004 was $40.4 million, all funds brush $149 million. (Read the .pdf one-sheet for details on how the money is gathered.) Employment there is broken down as follows:

Educational,health and social services (20.4%),
Professional,scientific,management,administrative,and waste management services (19.2%),
Finance,insurance,real estate,and rental and leasing (11.9%),
Retail trade (10.4%),
Arts,entertainment,recreation,accommodation and food services (10.1%).

When you get on a city bus, you don’t pay a fare for transport, then an additional fare for fuel, another fare for vehicle maintenance and depreciation, a forth fare for driver’s salary. You pay a single price for the service. Maybe Winter Park needs to bump the taxes on folks – I don’t know. I bridle at the ideas that the emergency services are supposed to be enlisted in that city’s efforts to generate more tax revenue, though. (And that a fire fighter would actually say such a thing, too! I can see a city commissioner or some such blurting out such a thing, but a fire fighter?!?). Call me neurotic, but separate fees conjure thoughts of padded bills. Will more engines be dispatched than necessary? Would more flares or absorbent be used? How much do you charge for using the Jaws? (“Buy three cuts, get the forth one free!”) Might police know an accident is property damage and request ambulance and FD anyway? Would uninsured or unlicensed motorists be at risk of receiving second-class treatment because there would be no insurance company to bill? Would the city eat those charges or try to collect from the individual? If a government is already at the point where it feels free to charge multiple times for its emergency services (the tax to buy the equipment, the bill to use it) what’s to guarantee the same government won’t encourage some shady practices such as I mentioned?

However far politically far apart people are, most agree that a function of government is to keep its people safe from danger and harm, be it from a car wreck, a knife-wielding robber, or a house fire. Using up bandages, saline, and road flares –or bullets- is a cost inherent in providing this service. Winter Park seems to be complaining about the cost of governing. I submit that, in communities such as this, where there is a fairly well educated, well compensated citizenry, where unemployment is a moderate 8.9% (2004) and where there is a wide variety of employment, well-distributed across the spectrum, a more reasonable response than hitting up accident victims for their –inflated! $435 if nobody’s even hurt- cost of being attended to would be to make sure there’s better tax compliance among the business community. Perhaps those 75% of non-city residents in accidents responded to are headed to and from Disney. Maybe The mouse should fork over some dollars to help out. On the other hand, since Disney must surely be paying the state handsomely, either through direct taxes paid the state or indirectly, through the benefits of tourist dollars spent in the state, perhaps the state should be forwarding more funds to the community. Any way you slice it, though, it’s crass and callous for a government to be submitting an itemized bill for having performed some of the most fundamental tasks anyone has ever asked of its government.

China bills the family of criminals it executes for the cost of the bullet used in carrying out the sentence.

 

[mdulrich]

I am going to speak up on this issue. I work for a municipal department that charges the insurance company of the at fault driver for FD responses on auto accidents.

Fire departments over the years have been expected to do more. It used to be that departments just put out fires. Now we are expected to do much more, EMS, auto extrication, HAZMAT, radioactive and biological agent responses, technical rescues, the list goes on. Not only are the demands increasing, but the cost of doing business increases. Our bunker gear costs more, trucks cost more, fuel prices rise, utilities cost more, etc. It is easy to say just raise taxes to cover these new expenses. But look around, it isn't easy to get people to pay increased or new taxes these days, in fact, everyone wants to pay less in taxes.

Everyone who pays vehicle insurance is already charged to cover your insurance company paying fire departments for what they do, check your policy. And while you are at it, you might want to look at your home owners insurance. I'll bet your insurance company is charging you on that policy for fire department responses. And if you think the companies are giving you this coverage for free, let me know, I have a Provoice capable scanner that decodes encyrpted audio I'll sell you.

The statement that if departments charge, the companies will pass the cost on in higher rates doesn't hold water. Have you gotten your rates lowered or gotten a rebate because your department doesn't charge? Maybe we shouldn't get our cars repainted when they are wrecked. If we all did that our rates wouldn't go up and maybe they would even go down. Yeah, right. Does anyone really think their car insurance rates aren't going to go up regardless of what fire departments do? Don't forget I still have that scanner for sale.

If we pay taxes to cover all the services that fire departments provide, shouldn't we get money back at the end of the year when we don't use those services? Or are we really paying for all that stuff and all those people to be there when we do need them? Why do we pay for building permits when we want to build a house? Why do we pay fees to tap into the water and sewer lines? Shouldn't that all be free? Don't we pay taxes that should cover that stuff?

Remember we charge the at fault driver's insurance company. This is the person that caused the accident by doing something wrong. This is the person that is getting the citation. I personally feel we should charge the at fault individual even if they don't carry insurance. If you don't carry insurance there are consequences for that choice when you see the judge, shouldn't this be one of them?

We have been able to purchase new extrication tools with the insurance money we collected. This has allowed us to be faster and more efficient at extrications. Everybody has benefitted from these new tools, tools we had not been able to afford out of our budget.

Mike

 

[BoxAlarm187]

I bridle at the ideas that the emergency services are supposed to be enlisted in that city’s efforts to generate more tax revenue, though ... Call me neurotic, but separate fees conjure thoughts of padded bills. Will more engines be dispatched than necessary? Would more flares or absorbent be used? How much do you charge for using the Jaws? (“Buy three cuts, get the forth one free!”) Might police know an accident is property damage and request ambulance and FD anyway? If a government is already at the point where it feels free to charge multiple times for its emergency services (the tax to buy the equipment, the bill to use it) what’s to guarantee the same government won’t encourage some shady practices such as I mentioned?

Speaking as a volunteer fire chief in my home county, and a career firefighter in a neighboring county, and can't help but to take offense to the notion that I would compromise my morals and values in order to "get more money" from the victim of an auto accident. Assuming that I worked an auto accident that needed a simple "door pop" with the extrication tool, how could I go home and feel comfortable that after I popped the door, I also cut out the windshield, took the roof off, and removed all of the other doors, because the main thing on my mind was the insurance payment - NOT the patient's well-being.

Furthermore, I have the right to refuse any order given to me by ANYONE if I can determine that it's unsafe, immoral, or illegal. (IE: The county government 'tells' me I should do more than necessary at the scene of an accident.)

Would uninsured or unlicensed motorists be at risk of receiving second-class treatment because there would be no insurance company to bill?

"Good afternoon, ma'am, my name is BoxAlarm187, and I'm with the fire department. I'll check you for injuries in a moment, but first I'll need to see your insurance card." :roll:

Again, assuming that my brother and sister firefighters would give 'second-class treatment' to someone based on thier ability to pay is pretty bold.

Would the city eat those charges or try to collect from the individual?

I've seen it done both ways, it varies from department to department.

Any way you slice it, though, it’s crass and callous for a government to be submitting an itemized bill for having performed some of the most fundamental tasks anyone has ever asked of its government.

While I understand that you're playing "devil's advocate" in your post, I propose this: I think that MOST citizens expect a thier government to provide an education to thier children, in which money comes from taxpayers (including me, and I don't have kids). Using your logic, is it unreasonable that the schools charge fees for books, lunch, special after-school activities, and the like? How does this differ from the Winter Park proposal?

 

[scannerman700]

Im not 100% sure, but did the State of Maryland pass a law stating,
If you have 6 or points on your Drivers License' you have to pay the MVA
$150.00 per year for 3 years and a certain percentange is gonna go to some of the Police,Fire,and Rescue Depts?