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Comment by phillmv | Hacker News Reader

you have a fixed pool of resources and more demand than there is availability. do you sort the queue by a impact on quality of life heuristic or do you sort the queue by willingness to pay money? in one system, people are more inconvenienced; in the other system, people with no money die or are saddled with debt.

anyways the crazy thing to me was recently learning that americans often still have to wait long periods of time in ERs and to see specialists. you're telling me y'all waste dozens of hours navigating insurance plans but you still have to wait an average of 50 days to see a dermatologist or wait for 6 hours in the ER?

believe it or not i don't wait that long here in canada

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This of course does lead us to our next question, which is "why is there more demand than there is availability?"

Also for what it's worth, in all of my recent ER visits in the States (which, to be honest, are not often, perhaps 3-4 in the last decade), did not have long wait times at all. I was always seen by an initial triage doctor within a half hour

Triage doctor? Fancy. In France we're talking nurse or even "volunteer" (ie. those med students everyone hates on, I hear there are actual volunteers too but I've mostly seen students) that do triage.

If they didn't limit the number of doctors that can be trained, there wouldn't be as much of a finite supply of resources. Furthermore, how does one decide "quality of life"? What the politicians and bureaucrats think is "quality of life" rarely matches what the patient thinks. Often, it the politician and bureaucrats prioritize what benefits them the most.

As far as wait times in the USA, yes, we have bureaucrats and politicians artificially limiting supply. But, it is only as bad as you say in select areas of the country, and in most cases urgent matters ate attended to faster.

It's not a fixed pool! The pool can grow.

Also wait times are longer in Canada. And an anecdote: I went to the ER last Monday. No wait. And had a referral to a surgeon that same day. And surgery on Wednesday!

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