Don't take the ambulance, just walk.

Kazabazua

Kazabazua

Active member
Last April I suffered a 3rd degree separation of my shoulder and a concussion while visiting Whistler BC (from Ontario). I was given morphine and phentanyl for my shoulder and sledded down the hill where an ambulance awaited to bring me to the hospital just down the street. They did some x rays figured out what was wrong with me, i paid for my sling etc. Several month's later I received a $530 ambulance bill from the BC government. Is this not covered under Ontario's beloved health insurance? No they dont cover ambulance rides. WTF. Basically guys , if your out of province and you break your leg, if you break your arm, basically if you can still crawl to the hospital half a km away just do it or you'll be walking into a $530 death trap that you werent told about.
 
Its worse in america. We dont have free healthcare and if you are covered they dont cover ambulances and they can be up to 5,000 dollars.
 
same with any province, generally you pay for rides in an ambulance.

and it keeps lots of non-life threatening injuries (like a dislocated shoulder or broken arm) out of the ambulance when it's just as effective to drive.
 
how long was your ride?

i had a twenty minute ride once but it was like 70 bucks. maybe since you were out of province of something but I don't know that seems like alot.
 
yeah ambulance rides are a bitch if you don't have additional coverage. But think about it, in the USA that ambulance ride would have been pennies compared to the hospital bill.
 
I had a hook through my thumb during a freak fishing accident. long story short, i asked how much the ambulance ride would cost they said 500 bones and i jumped out and walked 5 miles to a clinic where i waited 3 hours for it to open, in p-town. rough day to say the least.
 
i dont know how this will help your thread but here is my experience...

US citizen went up to whistler for a lil bit. got fucked up on the glacier and was flown out. they gave me a bill for the heli and nothing else. no drug charges from the scripts i got at the Med center at the bottom of the hill. only got charged for the heli. the drugs i got were fuckin intense! i for sure wold not have got the same kind of drugs in the US. they were kickin! and i truly believe they wouldve been illegal in the US haha. i didnt even get loaded into the chopper before i had a needle in me. it was AWESOME. you guys love your drugs!
 
yeah if you can get to the hospital any other than an ambulance that would be the way to do it. they're expensive and take longer usually.
 
haha, i just barely missed paying a 7500 bill for an ambulance ride and a cut on my head. luckily i had just re-uped my insurance the day before. 530 is nothing, that will probably be my co-pay.
 
Pretty sure they did'nt.

I had a similar situation happen when I seperated my shoulder. They gave me "morphine" before the ride down the mountain.

anyway at the hospital im still in alot of pain, doctor asks if ive been given morphine yet. I say yeah they gave me some on the hill and he just started swearing.

aparently they told me they gave me morphine when its really just some softcore painkiller and they hope it works as a placebo effect by telling me its morphine.

the doctor told me they're not allowed to carry it up there. but hey whistler and other mountains could be different.
 
Morphine is a bit extreme for broken wrist. I'm gonna go ahead and call bullshit on this. Also, I have never heard of ski patrol even having medication like that readily available.
 
nope a doctor definately came down started an IV in my arm and said 'okay first I'm going to give you a bit of phentynal to start killing the pain quickly, and then I'm going to give you some morphine'. This was in Black park in whistler they dont fuck around, they have doctors skiing around all day
 
mi friend crashed on his dirt bike bad and had to take a choper 9 miles and it cost 15 000. thats what he told me
 
On a side note, a separated shoulder is not a dislocated shoulder or a broken bone and I had no idea (neither did the doctor on the hill) what had happened. All I knew is I got knocked out, went to get up and ski away like i usually do, took 3 steps, collapsed, put my hand where the pain was to feel a big bone sticking out of my upper pec/shoulder area. I thought my collar bone had broken in half and was poking out.
 
oh they actually have doctors on site there? wow that's pretty intense.

but ski patrol are in no way are allowed to administer medicine like morphine.
 
whistler takes things seriously, my neighbour back home really seriously damaged his head/skull in the black park up blackcomb, and back in like 03 or 04 i saw some guy at the bottom of the jump with a huge medical team and i found out a few weeks later the guy died
 
Thats what I was thinking. Anyway I wouldn't bullshit about something as simple as that, and read the posts above, Whistler is pretty serious apparently...they said they were giving him morphine, I was with the kid for about 30 mins at the bottom of the park. Who knows if it was actually morphine, I could care less
 
Ambulance bills are a bitch, I'm still waiting on one from Whistler ice arena to the whistler hospital. Got a major concussion.

And I think you may have your drugs mixed up as there is no way in hell they would give you phentynal. You need an extremely high morphine tolerance that only an addict who has been on the stuff for years would have in order to not OD off even the smallest amount.
 
I'll tell my friend fidgettyfilmer to post in this thread. He double spiral fractured his both bones in his lower leg, like 8 inches apart. His ambulance ride from my house was upwards of 3 grand here in America.
 
One more thing, I'm from BC and still have to pay for ambulance rides in BC. It doesn't really matter where you're from.
 
Yah you might have. My dad was at whis this weekend and broke his arm and he told me they gave him phentynal and then morphine later. I had always assumed phentynal was just for cancer patients and stuff, it seems kind of extreme for an arm (even if he did have to stay in the hospital for a couple days).
 
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