Failed co-pays costing Town of Cairo
The Daily Mail
April 18, 2009

CAIRO — Patients who fail to cover their co-payments on ambulance service may be costing the Town and taxpayers, according to an emergency service officer.

Reay Mahler, adviser for the Town of Cairo Ambulance Service, asked the Town Board to remind residents who use the ambulance service to contribute to their co-pay fees.

“It is a fairly common problem,” Malher said, although he could not say specifically how many patients do not make the payments or how much money the service owed by those who have not paid.

Insurance companies cover most of the cost of transporting a patient to an emergency facility, but insurance companies also require patients to contribute to a co-pay. Co-pays, Mahler said, can cost either $50 or $100, depending on the insurance provider.

Mahler said that a patient was brought to a hospital in Hudson, Albany or Kingston in roughly 60 percent of the 1,025 times a Cairo ambulance was dispatched in 2008.

Mahler said some residents do not think they are responsible for a co-pay because the ambulance service is administered by the Town.

The co-pays help the service cover its operating costs, which can reach $120,000 a year, or $10,000 a month, not including payroll expenses.

The Town Board, and ultimately taxpayers, must make up the difference for the unpaid fees.

“The more that people do not pay their co-pays, the more the taxpayers have to make up that difference,” he said.

He said that the people who use the service should help to pay for that service. The ambulance service participates in mutual aid calls and stand-by calls as well as responds to events within the Town limits.

Town Supervisor John Coyne asked that those who require the ambulance service remember to settle their co-pays.