@adownie hasn't heard my rant on why the TV show "Emergency" is partly responsible for why we have paramedics at all, so here goes.

Note that this was relayed to me by my college professor for "The History of EMS" class in 1998, so forgive me if I've got an inaccuracy or two. ;)

1) Prior to 1974, Pre-hospital emergency care was basically shit. The "Ambulance" in your town was likely a hearse, owned by the local mortician.

They got the job of hauling people from accidents to the hospital because they had a car you could lie flat in. They'd drive your bleeding butt to the hospital and if you didn't make it, take you to their mortuary. There was fierce competition sometimes between morticians.

In other words, they'd fight for the right to get to car wrecks first so they could have dibs on you. Cool, huh?

Anyway this sucked, so in 1973 after years of studying what might be better than this, in comes "The Emergency Medical Services Act".

The EMSA provides congressional funding for several things, one of which is pilot programs to create professionals called "EMTs" who would have some sort of actual training on how to get you to the hospital alive (and no conflict of interest)

There's also a provision for "Paramedics" but that gets mired in the muck and few jurisdictions actually go that far. Los Angeles, though, had already been piloting this idea for a few years.

During their pilot program, an LA Firefighter gets in and becomes a Paramedic.

The pilot program goes for a bit and LA decides not to expand it. Meanwhile, a TV producer friend of the firefighter sees this stuff and says "That'd make a great TV show!" - So they pitch "Emergency!" all about these Paramedics, and the show sticks. It becomes a hit.

However, the government has lost its interest in the EMS sytem. By 1982 nobody is funding anything anymore, and they've moved onto other priorities.

Except, people are still loving that "Emergency!" show and starting to ask their congressperson questions.

Main question is: "Why does LA get Paramedics and we don't?"

Bunch of other things happen and the logjam is cleared by 1984, and NHTSA is given responsibility to create a national framework for EMS systems - including Paramedics and eventually the National Registry.

TLDR, the logjam in congressional action around an EMS system was broken in part by the popularity of the show "Emergency!" and the fact that people were jealous of LA having them.