Wow, I'd say that's pretty inaccurate about becoming a paramedic in the US...here's the deal. Becoming an *EMT* in the US is not particularly hard. Many states require you to be affiliated with an ambulance service or, say, a volunteer firehouse, which takes generally a background check, physical test, and simple recruit school. Then the actual Basic EMT class is about 120 hours of classroom and practice time. (Driving the ambulance is a seperate endeavor, usually requiring something like EVOC (emergency vehicle ops class) which is on top of a normal (or commercial) driver's license. However, being an actual paramedic (EMT-P) - the terms are far from synonymous. You can either work up through various flavors of EMT or start from scratch, but at the end of the day, It'll take the equivalent of a solid 2 year's full-time coursework. Medics carry and administer drugs, can start IVs, have some marginal differences in trauma care, can do real intubations and real cardiac rhythm analysis. Some places will give you paramedic as basically a bachelor's degree, with additional normal college requirements. Here's the other part - they don't necessarily get paid that badly. EMT-onlys sure do, but EMT / firefighters or paramedics or paramedic/firefighters, where they are paid, can be paid quite well. In rapidly growing counties (think the Southwest,) it is not impossible to be pulling $70k+, or $85k+ for a medic / ff....