Subsidies required to cut ambulance fees

A WOMAN IN TAI'AN in East China's Shandong province, was charged about 3,600 yuan ($550) for an ambulance to take her ill father to a hospital in the provincial capital Jinan, which is just 80 kilometers away. Guangming Daily on Thursday called for stricter supervision and more subsidies for ambulance services.

In the aforementioned case, the ambulance fee should have been 3 yuan per kilometer, according to relevant regulations issued by the local price bureau. Thus the total fee should have been 480 yuan for a round trip.

However, ambulance service providers are also allowed to negotiate the price with customers beforehand, and since they are usually only called in emergencies they have the upper hand in the negotiations. People are unlikely to cancel the ambulance they booked just because they are being overcharged, which makes most of the negotiations rather unfair.