PUBLIC VIEWPOINT Cities, County Need One Service

I’m frustrated with the numbers presented by the cities in the debate over ambulance services in Benton County.

I do not believe they have been accurately presented, and some areas are already compensating the ambulance services for runs into the county areas. Did you know that small areas such as Centerton help pay for Bentonville ambulance runs? Same with Lowell paying Springdale for advanced life support runs.

Not only are these cities collecting insurance, Medicare, and Medicaid monies on an ambulance run,they are collecting money from these diff erent areas mentioned above.

In addition to this, they are collecting sales tax from county residents shopping in the cities and they are requesting more than a million dollars now from county residents alone. This is not double-dipping like was questioned in meetings, this is quadruple-dipping!

It is time for the cities to be more forthcoming about how much these runs to the county alone actually cost.

I feel the proper resolution to this entire mess is for Benton County to do a countywide ambulanceservice that involves the cities, too. This can be done, and financially would be the best thing for everyone, including the city residents.

Everyone would pay the same, and everyone would receive similar level of service.

Currently, the seven ambulance providers are each paying their own administrative costs, and if it were one entity, this would save the city providers a lot of money. Why not combine it and save money for all?

When questions such as the above were raised by residents in the town hallmeetings, the only answers provided by the justices of the peace and County Judge Bob Clinard were that they have no control over what the cities submit and that the cities do not want to give up control.

I challenge the city representatives to answer why this would not work.

It is time to give up some of this control if costs become lower for all residents, and if service is equal for all city and county residents, then it just makes sense!

PAT TIMMONS

Rural Rogers

Opinion, Pages 5 on 02/08/2014

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