My first taxi passenger in 2012 was a woman going for outpatient surgery. Her Medicaid plan was paying for the transportation. The company’s computer system kept track of her fare.
In the old days the “voucher” fares were on paper slips. Most the hospitals and clinics switched to the taxi company’s electronic systems by the late 2000’s, but we still saw a few of the old paper vouchers… one of my more memorable fares was a woman going home from the hospital with a paper voucher. She’d taken herself to the ER on account of her monthly misery. They gave her pain medicine, as if that would help her financial situation, or her PTSD from childhood abuse.
Nothing unique about Uber and Lyft having contracts.
Basically it's business accounts for doctor offices to arrange transportation for their patients. Many elderly patients have trouble getting to doctor appointments because they don't have smartphones, can't drive, live in areas w/ poor public transit/taxi coverage, etc.
It didn't used to be underserved. We used to have taxis.
And while taxis didn't always like to pick up people in low-traffic areas, they always came for medical transports because they could bill insurance companies extra.
Who is this “we”? Back in the day my town (college town of ~100k) had lime 5 taxis total, and they mostly
Only worked fri/sat night hauling the more responsible drunks home.
