There is this concept called “triage” you might want to educate yourself about. The notion is that some emergencies are more emergent than others. In other words, your broken arm is important, but you can wait a couple hours to have it set if someone else is, saying, fountaining blood or having a heart attack or otherwise experiencing something that could result in death in minutes.
In the late 1970’s I once waited many hours to be seen for a knee injury. It was annoying, but wasn’t going to kill me. In the early 00’s my spouse went to the ER with severe abdominal pain and vomiting and was seen almost immediately.
If you’re really about to die you’ll be seen promptly in the ER. Otherwise, wait your turn like everyone else. This is nothing new, it’s been the case for decades, and has nothing to do with Obamacare, how many doctors medical schools churn out, or anything else you’ve mentioned.
My mother once waited four months for absolutely essential, life-saving heart surgery. She only got in that fast because several people on the waiting list ahead of her died. (New procedure, not many doctors trained in it) Guess what year that was: 1978. Now people with the same condition are given surgery within days, if not that very same day. The fact is, quite a bit has improved over the years.
Long waits for specialist are nothing new.
Hip and knee surgery? Are you going to die if you don’t get that new hip or knee today? No? I agree waiting is a pain but it’s not an emergency.
If you break your hip you’ll get immediate surgery. If you need a new hip yeah, you’ll wait. Why shouldn’t patients be prioritized based on need and other reasons?
Is that scan needed for an emergency? If so, you’ll get it immediately. If not… what’s your frickin’ hurry? Do you cut in line for everything? At the grocery store do you shove others aside and barge to the front of the line? Is your every dental appointment the very day you called the dentist or do you need to wait to get in there?
If the US was sane it would adopt a universal health care system like every other civilized nation on the planet, and even some not-so-civilized nations.
Cite for those, please.
It is the norm, and has been for decades.
It is the norm, and has been for decades. Well, maybe not so much for the family doctors, there is a shortage of them. That has to do more with relatively low income for those docs and the high cost of medical education, we could do more to encourage docs to be generalists rather than pushing them to be specialists.
I remember before those things existed.
You know, in 2005 I got a CT scan in under 2 days. The last time my spouse got one he had to schedule an appointment, I think it was three weeks. Not really a problem - his issue wasn’t nearly as serious or urgent as mine.
The sky is falling! The end is nigh! PANIC!!!
Actually, the medical schools are producing too high a percentage of specialists relative to generalist - which we really do need more of. It’s very, very expensive to educate a new doctor, expanding educational capacity will be expensive so feel free to suggest ways to fund that. We could also use more nurses, but we could also probably get more retired nurses back into the profession if we made the jobs more reasonable. Like, say, 8 hours shifts instead of 12, and a few other things like that.