Uber Cuts Ambulance Usage And Health Care Costs Across 766 US Cities

In recent months, it seems like there’s been nothing but bad news for Uber, like having its operating licence revoked in London (‘not fit and proper’), concealing a massive cyber-attack, price gauging a passenger $14,000 for a 5-mile ride and reporting a quarterly loss of $1.5 billion. Indeed, the company is becoming almost synonymous with problems. A Bloomberg story three days ago about Airbnb began ‘With Uber’s problems grabbing all the headlines, it’s easy to overlook the fact that the other great “sharing economy” company, Airbnb, is also having issues caused by an overaggressive expansion and a tendency to ignore rules’.
For once, a slightly more positive story about Uber has emerged, although there is even an ‘Uber’ downside to this. In brief, researchers have found that when Uber is launched in a city, ambulance usage declines significantly. From The Mercury News.
In what is believed to be the first study to measure the impact of Uber and other ride-booking services on the U. S. ambulance business, two researchers have concluded that ambulance usage is dropping across the country. A research paper released Wednesday examined ambulance usage rates in 766 U. S. cities in 43 states as Uber entered their markets from 2013 to 2015.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Dec 15, 2017.