Do you have to pay a fee when firefighters come and stop your house burning down?

25 comments

1. No. Fire Departments are funded by the communities they serve.

2. No

3. No, do you?

4. Sometimes but mostly no. Depends on what state/city. But can also be due to negligence on your part.

5. No , generally there is no fee to call the Police or Fire Department, in the event of an emergency. It’s paid by taxes.

6. There are some areas of the US where [this is the case](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_response_fee), but in general, no, fire services are funded completely by taxes.

7. You pay taxes for fire services. You can however be fined for illegal burning infractions, including those that light your home on fire.

8. You misunderstand the American healthcare system completely and no, 99+% of us do not get a bill from the fire department for stopping a fire. A few communities have tried service based subscriptions for fire, it’s idiotic and extremely unusual.

9. I’m a firefighter. It’s different depending on what area of the US you’re talking about, but in our system our department is contracted with the city and our funding is a mixture of property taxes, mill levies and ambulance billing. We’re the only emergency medical service in the town. The only thing we would bill someone for is transporting them in an ambulance.

10. I dont really know the specifics but in DE the fire dept are not funded by the state so they send me mail once or twice a year soliciting donations.

    We also had about half a billion dollar tax surplus this past year, and a higher one projected for next year, which seems like it could just cover all that, but I’m not a lawmaker so what do I know.

    I dont think they charge you if they come out, but I don’t have any first hand experience there.

11. No. But there have been a couple isolated incidents that you pay a fire fighting fee annually and people have neglected to pay and got unlucky.

    Typically your taxes take care of it.

    The quality of fire protection varies greatly for region to region.

12. No.

    Though, my insurance pays for my healthcare. It’s just private.

13. [removed]

14. No. But OP please don’t give our private equity funds any ideas with your question. They’d happily buy up our fire departments and then charge us a monthly tiered subscription.

15. It’s worth emphasizing that there are some places in the US where you have to pay for firefighting on a per-service basis. Generally these are unincorporated places outside of municipal borders, where residents don’t pay taxes that specifically support a fire department. It’s relatively rare that this would happen and if you lived in one of those places, you’d probably know it. In some places, people pay subscription fees so they can access private firefighting. Again, mainly in areas outside city limits.

    Lots of people in my part of Oregon want to live outside of city limits because the taxes are lower, but hopefully they understand this may have all kinds of other impacts on the services that are available to them.

16. No, you also don’t understand the healthcare system.

17. Your understanding of our insurance system leaves quite a bit to be desired.

    But then, I doubt you care.

18. Tell me you dont understand the American health care system without telling me you dont understand the american healthcare system.

19. No.

    Regarding health car, we pay for insurance. Our employers usually pay most of our insurance and we pay a little. What the insurance covers depends on the plan.

    My insurance covers some things completely and some things partially, but what I pay caps at a certain amount ever year and I don’t have to pay a percentage any more after that.

    In addition, my employer gives me money every year that can only be used for medical expenses. They give me more than I have needed to use and I have not had to pay for anything with my own money (aside from little bit each month that helps pay for my insurance plan).

    I have a good insurance plan and not everyone does, but it’s not anything like the rest of the world thinks.

20. No fire fee here.

    But I did have to pay $10 to register my security system and after something like 6 call outs (where the police come out if the alarm goes off and there’s no actual crime) in a year, the next five cost $10 each, then it’s an increasing sliding scale.

    I’m totally ok with this tho, even tho so far deer have set it off twice lol

21. >I understand the healthcare system is that you have to pay for everything down to the ambulance that gets you when you have an emergency

    This isn’t true for all of us.

22. Depends on the area, but where I live the Fire service is paid via property taxes to the city/county. As for ambulance service, that is transporting and will fall under your health insurance.

23. > I understand the healthcare system is that you have to pay for everything down to the ambulance that gets you when you have an emergency

    You do not understand correctly.

24. I don’t pay for ambulance rides, my insurance does.

25. I’ve never once paid for everything when I’ve needed any type of emergency services. There is something called max out of pocket and a deductible. When you see those insane bills posted on Reddit for like 200k it’s usually the EOB that is sent first before insurance steps in. If you don’t have insurance most if not all, hospitals will work with you and you can negotiate it down. We also have Medicaid and other programs. I once was able able to apply for something called fidelis care when I was out of work and got a $700 bill for something unexpected. They covered it all.