A woman trapped between a train and a platform in Boston, with her bone exposed through her thigh, pleaded with bystanders not to call an ambulance, asking them “do you know how much an ambulance costs?”
The accident happened on Friday, and a Boston Globe reporter on the scene described how the woman slipped between the subway train and the platform, trapping her leg. Left “in agony and weeping” as commuters rocked the train back and forth in an effort to free her, she begged them not to call an ambulance, as she said, “It’s $3000...I can’t afford that.”
Awful scene on the orange line. A woman’s leg got stuck in the gap between the train and the platform. It was twisted and bloody. Skin came off. She’s in agony and weeping. Just as upsetting she begged no one call an ambulance. “It’s $3000,” she wailed. “I can’t afford that.”
— Maria Cramer (@GlobeMCramer) June 29, 2018
In a series of follow-up tweets this Tuesday, the reporter explained that the woman was eventually freed from the five-inch gap and suffered no broken bones. Sitting on the platform in pain, she was reportedly crying, worried about how the accident would affect her financially.
Emergency personnel on the scene bandaged the unidentified woman’s wound, and sent her to the hospital. While she had no broken bones, they still said her injuries would require surgery.
According to the reporter, Maria Cramer, the woman’s ambulance ride cost her roughly $1,200, still a hefty fee for anyone. That price tag does not include the cost of actual medical care, room and board at the hospital, drugs, bandages, or ay of the myriad of other expenses that make American healthcare among the most expensive in the world.
Cramer’s tweet went viral, and it is being held up as a damning indictment of the American healthcare system.
Incredibly sad. A woman badly hurt in the Boston subway system begged good Samaritans not to call an ambulance for her. "Do you know how much an ambulance costs?" https://t.co/QqlPnAOxfP
— Andrea Swalec (@andreaswalec) July 3, 2018
America is the only industrialized country in the world whose political class generally believes it is too radical and extremist to guarantee that people don't die from a lack of basic healthcare.
— David Sirota (@davidsirota) July 3, 2018
The system is designed to assume that you never go anywhere but to a job and home, so you have to buy additional travel insurance if you dare cross a state line EVER. It's barbaric, outdated, and just unrealistic.
— Toad Lady