Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health,

where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges.

If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jhhhu.edu.

That's public health question at jhhu.edu for future podcast episodes.

This is Lindsay Smith Rogers.

Today, we're again turning the podcast over to our guest host, Dan Gorenstein, a longtime health

reporter and host of the podcast tradeoffs. The topic today is the hidden and often exorbitant

cost of ambulance rides. Congress banned most surprised medical bills back in 2020 with the

exception of ambulance rides. Can lawmakers find a fix?

Let's listen. Every year in America, ambulances make more than 20 million runs to the hospital.

Cyclists hit by cars. Seniors, paralyzed by strokes, kids shot by guns.

These rides give people in some of their worst moments, their best chance staying alive.

But they can also leave a lot of people feeling blindsided.

I thought I was prepared. I thought I covered my bases.

But this ambulance spill, it rocked my world.

For patients with private insurance, as many as one out of every four ambulance rides

could end up in a surprise charge.

But cities and counties say they rely on these fees to fund life-saving emergency services.

Today, the price patients pay for these unexpected bills and a federal committee's fraught plan

to end them.

From the studio at the Lender Davis Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, I'm Dan Gorenstein.

This is tradeoffs.

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