“No good deed goes unpunished” is the cynical middle-schooler of cliches, but it’s hard not to trot it out when you see that a California man was billed $143 by paramedics after saving a family that was trapped in a car accident.
According to CBS Sacramento, Derrick Deanda freed a family from a flipped van by pulling over and breaking a window, prior to the arrival of paramedics.
“I pulled up right as it happened,” he said. “There was a guy standing inside the van, because it was on its side, holding a 2 year-old infant.”
Weeks after that, however, Deanda was found a bill in his mail for nearly $150. According to Cosumnes CSD Deputy Fire Chief Mike Mclaughlin, the bill goes to anyone who receives services from his department. Deanda was evaluated by the paramedics for a small cut on his hand and given a bottle of water.
“We’re obligated to provide the same level of service, the same billing the same everything, for every patient we encounter,” he said, before admitting that Deanda’s case was unique. “In my 28 years, this is my first time I’ve run into a situation similar to this.”
McLaughlin, for his part, hopes that the fee is waived and pointed out that there is a system to have the fee removed.
“There is a mechanism for appealing this. a mechanism for making this right. Our desire it to make it right,” he said.
Though Deandra says that the “the look on the man’s face when I was able to break that windshield and get him and his kids out of that vehicle was all the thanks I needed”, he is concerned about the bill and whether or not stories like his will have a chilling effect on motorists offering help.
(via BoingBoing)