The cruelest thing about an ambulance is how honest it is. There is no insurance lobbyist in the back. No committee hearing. No budget memo explaining why you have to pay thousands to save a family member. There is only a stretcher, a pulse, a siren, and the quiet understanding that someone’s emergency arrived before elected officials’ courage did.
Starting this July, Richmond University Medical Center will pull two 911 ambulances off Staten Island’s streets. That means we will go from six daytime rigs to four. Meanwhile, our volunteer fire companies, Oceanic Hook and Ladder and Richmond Engine Co. 1, answered over 2,000 emergencies last year with barely enough city funding to buy fuel, purchase bunker gear, or fix an aging firehouse.
As an EMT, I know what it feels like to sit in the back of an ambulance and hear the radio as calls begin stacking up. I know the look on a family member’s face when they are trying to stay calm and failing. Nobody in that moment asks whether the patient has the right insurance card. They are asking if help is here. Too often in Albany, that question gets treated like a budget footnote…