I did not know this. The ambulance situation is a shambles and wildly differs from state to state and in what your health insurance provider (if you have one) may not make you aware of. The article includes a comparison of all states’ ambulance services.
If you’re low income it’s free
In Victoria it’s $50 for a single and $110 for a family annually. Concession is free. Ambulance Victoria does good work and saves many lives, as do ambulance services everywhere.
https://membership.ambulance.vic.gov.au/faqdetails?id=KA-01021
What they’re saying is if you’re poor you might be lucky to have $100 or less a month to live on after you pay everything, where $50 a year represents ~4-5% of a poor person’s yearly income left after paying bills. It’s expensive being poor… They can’t afford things like this and end up stuck with a bigger bill.
For me that’s like paying $2600 a year.
If you are on concession it’s free. If yours a full paying family it’s $110 per year.