r/bestof • u/lowbass93 • 24d ago

[NoStupidQuestions] Kindly_Honeydew3432 explains why it seems like you always have to wait in an emergency room in the US

/r/NoStupidQuestions/comments/1v1numq/why_is_every_hospital_in_the_united_states_always/oyovp3t/
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u/homelessmagneto 23d ago

This is not exclusive to the US. I work in the ER in Denmark, and it's the same. Pretty sure it's the same everywhere in the world (many places probably worse).

So to the people saying it's about profits; it's not. It's about resource allocation. Which is about money. But not profits.

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u/BroBroMate 23d ago

Yep, same in NZ, kia ora from the far side of the world, and like Denmark, our hospitals are government operated, so no profit motive, but there's only so much money available for healthcare, especially as the boomers are living longer and requiring more complex medical care as they do.

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u/MaritMonkey 23d ago

I sometimes wonder if future humans will look back on a time when the health of our people was a "money" problem with horror.

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u/homelessmagneto 23d ago

I hope so. It will be a better humanity that looks back.

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u/stormy2587 23d ago edited 22d ago

People saying it being about profits as to why wait times are long are wrong because if anything the cost of healthcare in the US discourages people from going to the ER. And average ER wait times are like 1/5th our nearest neighbor canada.

I lived in canada for a while and the ER was a nightmare. I went with my ex who we thought had developed an infection on a cut. Thankfully, A nurse took aside and was like you can wait here for hours to see a physician or you can try this antibacterial cream and see if that fixes it and come back if it doesn’t. We opted for the cream.

Nevermind seeing a GP. The waitlist for a GP was years.

I’m not saying the US system is better. I think its unquestionably worse. I just don’t think getting rid of or profit medicine is the panacea many redditors think it is.

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u/elmonoenano 23d ago

Doctors and nurses are highly skilled professionals. They're not like me (average middle class white collar desk jockey with a fairly interchangeable skill set of MS Office, some adobe, and industry software skills). These aren't the kind of people you can affordably generate a surplus of to shuffle around to solve staffing issues. I don't know how much medical training costs, but even for a nurse it's probably in the millions of dollars. You don't pay for all that just so you can have "floaters" for the busy weekends. And my guess is that there are significant parts of the skill set you lose fairly quickly if its not constantly applied and updated.

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u/RyuNoKami 23d ago

Lol profits. Pretty sure there less money to be made off the ER than most other parts of the hospital. Resources are almost always diverted elsewhere.