People with mild discomfort (e.g. a persistent cough) fill up most of the emergency rooms where I’m from, since the hospital is free. Unfortunately what this means is if you have a non life threatening problem, you have to wait in the same room as people with colds and flues that should be in bed waiting it out and eating soup.
Meanwhile here is the U.S. I destroyed my ankle falling down a flight of stairs and I never had x-rays or any treatments and couldn’t afford to lose hours at work (where I made $8 / hour), so I bought a cane at Walmart and went to work on my foot. I had a permanent bursa as a result and I never found out what happened.
Years later when I finally had access to healthcare through insurance partially subsidized by my employer, I was getting another x-ray on the same ankle (because one injury makes future injuries more likely) they found out that tendons had ripped bone off during the original injury. :-(
People with mild discomfort (e.g. a persistent cough) fill up most of the emergency rooms where I’m from, since the hospital is free. Unfortunately what this means is if you have a non life threatening problem, you have to wait in the same room as people with colds and flues that should be in bed waiting it out and eating soup.
to be fair, if you have a bad case of the flues you should be in the ER.
A bad case, yes.
Here in the states, people fill up the ER not because its free… its because they legally cant turn you away without looking at you first…
I’ve been coughing for like 6 months now. Long covid, and I’ve been told it can last over a year.
That’s obviously not what I mean.
Meanwhile here is the U.S. I destroyed my ankle falling down a flight of stairs and I never had x-rays or any treatments and couldn’t afford to lose hours at work (where I made $8 / hour), so I bought a cane at Walmart and went to work on my foot. I had a permanent bursa as a result and I never found out what happened.
Years later when I finally had access to healthcare through insurance partially subsidized by my employer, I was getting another x-ray on the same ankle (because one injury makes future injuries more likely) they found out that tendons had ripped bone off during the original injury. :-(