Memo: Public Ambulances - A Necessary Investment in Good Jobs and Healthy Communities
By Avi Zenilman, Winn Periyasamy, and Matthew Cortland
Executive Summary
President Biden’s “American Rescue Plan” will help stabilize struggling state and local health agencies. But in order to successfully recover from the COVID-19 pandemic and its effects on the healthcare workforce, as well as address the ongoing need for emergency health services, we will need to provide more support for firefighters, paramedics, emergency medical technicians (EMTs), and other essential first-responders.
To do this, the Biden Administration and the 117th Congress must strengthen the ability of local governments and fire departments to run their own ambulance services so they can respond to the needs of their residents. Expanding public ambulance and emergency services — coupled with a training program for first responders similar to the GI Bill — is both popular with voters and good policy. These investments would strengthen our public infrastructure for care: they would improve local government and community innovation capacity, protect American families in crisis, take a major step toward eliminating one of the remaining bulwarks of surprise medical billing, and create good jobs everywhere.
