Healthcare

balderdash@lemmy.zip to Memes@sopuli.xyz – 1157 points –
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Or he didn’t want to spend 12 hours waiting in emergency in Canada or the Uk?

Buddy, in America we could wait 12 hours, get a $1000 bill to look at it, then wait 12 weeks to actually get treatment if the radioactive spider bite requires referral to a specialist, followed by a $4000+ bill if the only radioarachnidologist is "out of network"...

You left out the part where after the 12 week wait for treatment your referral expired and now need a new one before they'll see you.

You only wait that long if they've determined you're not actually an emergency.

What’s the definition of emergency?

If you are actively dying or at risk of sudden death you get to cut the line. If you're waiting a long time in the ER it's because there are people sicker than you, or a lot of people as sick as you in front of you. Stable but needs treatment is basically the bottom of the list.

Welcome to literally all emergency rooms anywhere. They're emergency rooms, the bigger the emergency, the further up the line you move. A spider bite in many instances is not that big of an emergency. A spider bite from an experimental radioactive spider with who knows what done to it? That's at the "getting a government agency involved" level of emergency.

Last time I was in a U.S. Emergency Room, I was there a good 10-12 hours. The time before that, it was 8 or 9. And both times I came early in the day when there was almost no one in the waiting room.