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🌂Cloudy with possible rain and highs in the 50s. Sunset is at 4:12 p.m.
Hope everyone had a restful and peaceful weekend. Today we’re bringing you one family’s experience with ambulance debt as part of Debt Mills, a series from the GBH News Center for Investigative Reporting that explores how big companies use small claims courts as a collections tool. If you or a loved one have to take an ambulance and end up with a large bill covered by insurance, GBH News reporter Liz Neisloss collected a list of tips from consumer debt experts, including: send the ambulance company your insurance information, ask for an itemized bill and dispute any incorrect or out-of-network charges, check comparable rates, and more.
Four Things to Know
1. Lawmakers in Massachusetts are again considering a bill that would ban local police officers from participating in federal immigration enforcement. “We want to do everything we can in Massachusetts to not be aiding and abetting the deportation of undocumented immigrants, the vast majority, upwards of 70% of whom are being detained have no criminal conviction or record,” State Sen. Jamie Eldridge said. He’s filed a version of this bill every session going back more than a decade.
The bill, known as the Safe Communities Act, would forbid police and court officials from asking people about their immigration status; mandate that local police, correctional officers, and court officials get written consent before letting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers interview a person in their custody; and prohibit local police departments from signing agreements that designate their officers as deputies of federal immigration agents — meaning they do federal work while getting paid with local taxpayer funds.
2. And then there were 11: the field of ballot questions you may see when you go to vote in November is taking shape. Proponents of 11 questions have collected 75,000 signatures apiece and now the questions head for the Massachusetts legislature. There, lawmakers can pass the proposed laws without sending them to voters. If they decide not to do so, the campaigns behind each question will have to get additional signatures and take their case to the polls next fall.
Among the issues at hand: approving same-day voter registration, making the governor and legislature beholden to the Massachusetts public records law, open primaries in which candidates from all parties would compete head-to-head, and a rent control measure.
3. If you’re tired of turkey and looking for something new to try, a chef from Cambridge has a creative suggestion: green crabs, the invasive (and edible!) species now found off every continent except Antarctica. In our region, they can destroy oyster and kelp beds, said Chef Tracy Chang of Pagu in Cambridge.
“If we want to be eating oysters for decades to come, then we also have to eat the green crabs,” Chang said, calling them “very delicious.” “You could make like clam chowder and do your riff on it, but with a green crab stock. For us, we sell a lot of ramen at our restaurant, so what I did was I made a green crab stock and I added coconut milk, lemongrass, makrut lime leaves, ginger, Thai chili. We made a curry paste and we made this laksa broth.”
4. Boston will be one of four cities with a team in next year’s inaugural season of the Women’s Pro Baseball League. Boston’s players and the other three teams — representing New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco — will not travel from city to city but rather play the entire season in Springfield, Illinois. It’s an exciting moment for catcher Beth Greenwood of Amherst, New Hampshire, who was drafted to the Boston team.
“It’s pretty special to not just be drafted and be a professional baseball player, but to be able to play for kind of your hometown, it’s something that I think as a little kid, that’s what you dream about when you’re in the backyard swinging off the tee into the fence,” Greenwood said. “And so I think all those things and those visions you play in your head as a little kid, I was like, ‘Holy s***, this is happening, like this is real.’”
Need an ambulance in Massachusetts? It could leave you thousands in debt.
It all started when Rebecca Kelly’s son started hyperventilating in wrestling practice a year and a half ago. His father took him to urgent care, where they said he needed to go to the hospital, just in case. Her son took a one-mile ambulance ride to a nearby hospital, where he was evaluated and sent home.
They thought that was the end of it — until the bill for that short ambulance ride arrived for $6,500.
“I was astounded,” Kelly told GBH reporter Liz Neisloss. “How could it cost so much for a one-mile ride?”
Neisloss met Kelly in small claims court in Woburn, where the ambulance company, Action Ambulance, was suing Kelly to try and get her to pay a $3,400 balance left over after insurance payments. When Kelly’s case was called, a clerk magistrate sent her into the hall to negotiate with the company’s collections manager, Charles Coolidge.
“Anything that’s a balance after insurance becomes a patient responsibility or parent responsibility,” Coolidge told her. “If it’s too high, we can work with you and try to get it squared away.”
They went back and forth before settling on a final amount: $1,700. Kelly handed Coolidge her credit card there in the hallway, feeling disbelief.
“If you need an ambulance, you shouldn’t have to go to small claims court, a year and a half later, to settle your bill,” Kelly told GBH News.
In her reporting, Neisloss found that finger-pointing between insurance companies and ambulance companies has left some states looking for another way to protect patients. There are 20 states nationwide that ban or limit ambulance companies from billing patients more than their insurance company will cover — including New Hampshire, Maine, and New York, according to the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
“We’ve been waiting for the market — the insurance market, the health care provider market — to solve this, and it hasn’t happened,’’ said Patricia Kelmar of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. “And that’s the appropriate time to look for regulation.”
Neisloss explores the ambulance debt problem — as well as potential solutions — here.
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