Private EMS operators billed Medicare nearly $500 million since 2005

An investigation done by the Houston Chronicle found that private EMS operators are “making millions of dollars off the poor, the sick and the mentally vulnerable, whether they need a costly EMS lift or not.”

Surprisingly, “many of the patients are neither physically debilitated nor confined to a sick bed. They are not headed to, or coming from the hospital, and there is no medical emergency. However, by the federal government’s own rules, many of these EMS transports should not qualify for federal dollars.”