To be fair you can't exactly call the current system in the US free market. There are ridiculous restrictions on hospitals and insurance companies that prevent proper competition from occurring in many cases.

While single payer is often a better system, it's not without its problems - in Canada ER wait times are ridiculous, my sister had to wait 10 hours recently and if you want to find a GP? Good luck. Everyone is booked solid.

I thought Obamacare seemed like a good compromise to be honest. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like that's been a miraculous solution. I think some sort of free market solution with a safety net on the low end could do the job, but I don't know what that would look like. And I don't think we've seen any proposals in that direction.

I live in Canada. Things vary. For sure triage is in place in ER like anywhere else. But I've sat in many an ER with my kids, my mother in law (cancer), and many friends and myself and honestly I've always felt their scheduling was fair considering the priorities and demand.

But right now I can see my family doctor with 1 day notice, most times same day, and they have someone on-call for phone 14 hours a day and on weekends. Mostly I can avoid ER and drop-in clinic visits completely.