Ambulance: Transportation for non medical emergency situations

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/alpha-consumer/2008/4/1/health-insurance-denial-compounds-grief.html
is an article by Kimberly Palmer that describes the difficulties in obtaining ambulance transportation for non-emergency situations.

This kind of coverage is often OMITTED from insurance coverage.
*First, find out your ambulance coverage.
*Second find out you non-emergency ambulance coverage.
*Third find out alternative medical transport options perhaps through your local government's department of human services or private options, ask hospitals about availability of such help or your physician when you ask for the certification.
*Know that under Medicare Part B, there is ambulance coverage for non-emergency and that the safest way to preserve this right is to get an ABN (Advanced Beneficiary Notice) and a Doctor's note certifying the indication of such a need.

The way things are, you are likely to have a fight on your hands. As in all things insurance, however, documentation will only help. So even if you are not covered by Medicare part B, get the physician certification and notify your insurer in writing of the need. This will preserve your strength in arguing after the fact.

It's difficult to imagine ourselves too weak, too ill to take ourselves or to be able to be a passenger in a vehicle to get to an appointment or treatment. Only those of us who have seen this know the challenges and heartbreak of trying to drag someone into the car or to prop them up in the seat. But difficulty in imagining it does not excuse our society from ignoring this most compromised portion of disabled population.

I would like to see a flurry of lawsuits based on discrimination, denying medical care based on actual disability, deliberate infliction of emotional harm on patients and their caretakers for such denials, and general negligence suits because in a given situation the need for medical transport is or should have been anticipated by a reasonable person. Short of the lawsuit route, most ambulance trips come under amounts currently permitted in small claims courts where suing for breach of contract or for fraud or even for unjust enrichment...paying fees for coverage that is not provided, might be indicated.

I'd also like to see claims for mental distress caused by this negligence, fraud, breach of contract and the expenses, hardship and misery that results. And then, when caretakers need psychological assistance, they can use their own insurance to get needed psychological care...no doubt another drain on the poor profit-hungry insurers.