Sunday, August 1
· Headlines – January 6th committee, U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan
o Great summation of the reaction to Simone Biles withdrawing from events at the Olympics – “A bunch of idiots got mad that a 24-year-old wouldn’t do flips for their amusement.”
o I loved John’s various descriptions for Biden’s hair – “business ghost,” “sane Doc Brown,” and “the flat Jamie Lee Curtis.”
o Like John, I clocked Biden’s phrasing when he said Afghan interpreters were free to come to the U.S. “if they so choose” – “It’s not so much their choice as it is ours. We’re the ones in control of the process.”
o John described the whole interpreter situation as “the Bill Cosby comeback tour” of crises – “We can all we where it’s going, and if we don’t act quickly, something terrible is going to happen.”
· And Now This – Jim Cramer praising Chipotle
o Eh, not the best montage – My favorite part was Jim Cramer pronouncing it “Chipot-lee.”
· Main Story – EMS workers
o I laughed out loud at John’s description of a Brussels ambulance siren – “It sounds like Mickey Mouse getting fucked on a washing machine, in a good way.”
o We revisited a clip of an EMT from an episode on essential workers near the start of the pandemic. John summed up his grievance succinctly – “People clapping and giving pizza in appreciation is nice, but it’s not a substitute for the things they actually need,” like health insurance(!) or livable wages.)
o Like everything this show explores, regulation of emergency medical services is in a deplorable state – There’s no federal administration standardizing anything, so we’re left with a patchwork of almost 19,000 state/local program.
o Since EMS isn’t actually considered an essential service nationwide, there are no funds provided for it in a number of places, forcing some to fundraise to keep running – “You know our healthcare system is fucked up when our patients and providers are both using the same crowdfunding platform.”
o This helps to explain why ambulance rides are exorbitantly expensive, to cover basic costs – one woman was charged $1,700 for an ambulance ride after she gave birth in her car a few hundred yards from the hospital (and then she was charged another $1,700 for the same ride for her newborn son.)
o Yet, because these costs are only paid when ambulances transport someone to a hospital, that leads EMS workers to transport patients unnecessarily for minor issues that could be treated on site.
o Throughout, John’s thesis was that, because EMS is so important, we need to back that up with actual funding and regulation – “They absolutely should be labeled an essential service, especially because everyone already thinks they are.”
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