Editorial: NLV gets it right on ambulance issue

Sunday, Feb. 20, 2000 | 9:52 a.m.

We congratulate the North Las Vegas City Council for voting last week in support of an application from Southwest Ambulance to compete with American Medical Response for emergency vehicle service calls. Clark County previously took similar action to open ambulance service to competition and the city of Las Vegas did so for nonemergency calls.

If local government decides that private companies are better suited to provide certain essential services, it makes sense to permit competition as long the public is not adversely affected. Open competition is good for consumers because it often leads to lower prices and greater efficiency.

One way to make sure the public is best served by competing ambulance services is for the companies to submit to regular audits by local government. This is to ensure that their life-saving abilities are operating at optimum efficiency.

We do not think that local government should stop with ambulance service, however. There likely are numerous other examples where the county and its municipalities have awarded exclusive contracts to a single company to provide goods or services. We suggest local government take this opportunity to revisit all such contracts to make sure that open competition is not the better way to go.