Asysin, I can relate 10000% to this, as I live in Southern NJ, not the shore, but close enough. Where I live there is only ONE, yes people only ONE ALS service in the county with roughly 6 units on the road at a time, serving approx 510,000 people everyday. Now this might not seem like a lot of people, but add 2 major cities, and many towns spread across a decent area, then this presents a problem. All too often we have had ALS units come in from the next county over to cover all the ones already tied up. The system is ass backwards, as only a hospital is allowed to run a MICU program, and you are only allowed to petition to start a program, as Asysin noted with the help from a politician.
This state, for some reason, has a grudge against pre-hospital providers, ever since the start of EMS in the state. EMTs in certain places make way more than medics do, and they wonder why there is such a hardship in finding medics to staff the trucks.
As for the volunteer squads, even though I am a member of a volunteer squad on the side for "shits and giggles", I am beginning to wonder the value of them. Time after time, I hear an "All Call" get toned out, or even 2 squads at a time, because after all, one of the two will respond. This scares me, as 8+ minutes before a squad can even respond let alone arrive on location with BLS services to work a code. Its a sad situation, the state is corrupt from the bottom up. The law makers and politicians don't care about what service people are getting, only what the hospital monopolies are making and what they can shove in their pockets from the lobbyists.
I'm sorry, but this is a PERFECT example of how NOT to run an EMS system, unless that is if you don't care about your citizens and rather rake in the profits from your own monopoly without competition and unfair rules and regulations