Emergency room waits

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Yes I absolutely agree that many people abuse the emergency room.

On a typical ER shift when I work (for example tomorrow for 24 hours) 2/3 of the people will be non-emergency cases and 1/3 of the people will be urgent or emergency cases.

The solution is to charge people user fees.

Charge a $5.00 user fee to visit a doctor's office, this would cut down on unnecessary office visits. Charge a $25.00 user fee for ER visits, you would see the number of ER visits reduced by half.

However none of this will ever happen, there are too many people looking out for themselves.

I believe this is known as the tragedy of the commons, when something is communally owned by everybody (for example our health care system), then nobody has any incentive to take proper care of it.

Oh and incidentally waiting 2-1/2 hours with chest pain and shortness of breath represents a failure of the ER's triage system. You might have had a collapsed lung, people with potentially life threatening conditions are supposed to be seen immediately while the others wait.