>"I have an ear infection."

Maybe there has been a paradigm shift here? Analogous to house-calls no longer being a "thing", maybe minor things like ear infections, pink eye, strep throat, etc. are now relegated to urgent care physicians. And your GP is more for following up on non-urgent and chronic/recurrent conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure, etc..

Urgent Care is an option out there but it's always a mad dash as soon as they're open to schedule an appointment. And there's only a two-hour window at the beginning of each day for walk-ins. You can lose the lottery and have to try again the next day.

I'm currently looking for a used EKG machine so family members can use it and send the results to a doctor without having to wait 12+ hours in the ER waiting room across the aisle from the COVID seating area.

Ear infections are not minor. If left untreated, they can lead to permanent hearing loss.

House calls are still a thing if your willing to pay a lot more.

I use horse medicine (burow's solution / used to be star-otic but now that stuff is reformulated to remove any active ingredients) for an ear infection.

The ear nose throat medical profession is so corrupt. They got the only medicine that works taken off the market so you have to see a doctor. By the time I see a doctor the infection is either gone or three times worse. So I buy the horse / dog / cat medicine instead. It's the same as a human medicine but the human medicine has been taken off the market! You can't talk me out of doing this because it's been working for me for 3 decades!

Lots of medicines have been castrated and/or taken off the market to drive more people to see doctors more -

1. Chlorasceptic 2. Burow's solution

The horse version of medicines is formulated differently and is in a different concentration than for humans. It's your life, though.

Burow's solution is available on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Domeboro-Medicated-Relief-Powder-Pack...

So is Chloraseptic: https://www.amazon.com/Chloraseptic-Throat-Spray-Menthol-Bot...

That is NOT chlorascepric. It's new "this doesn't work" -a-sceptic. AS I SAID, medical professional have been moving to castrate OTC medicines. I have a hoard of original chlorasceptic with actual working, antiseptic ingredients ...

You have too much of a reliance on fake info from stale web articles. The only active ingredients in current chloraseptic are benzocaine, menthol, and dextromethorpan hydrobromide. I have a box of the useless kind in front of me. No actual antiseptics any more, just cover up the problem; do nothing actually.

The benzocaine variants are just a different flavor. They're produced in parallel with the original formula.

You have no idea where I get my information, you just don't like anything to contradict your loony ideas. I'm done with this conversation.

You can buy Chloraseptic Sore Throat Spray with Phenol on Amazon, if that's the active ingredient you're looking for.

The same active ingredient, phenol, has been used in Chloraseptic since 1953.

> NYC is great. You can usually see a doc same-day or 1-2 weeks for a specialist.

I have family in NYC. For a non-emergency condition, the earliest appointment with a specialist was there months away. It was much easier to fly to India where one could get an appointment the same day.

This is not my experience in NYC at all. For example, waiting to see a sleep specialist took me about six months. An endocrinologist took about the same. In both cases I spent hours calling different practices and trying to find shorter wait times. My doctor says it’s still because of COVID and the shock it had to the medical system.

It’s just luck. In NYC my relative (w/ terrible insurance) got a biopsy, saw a surgeon the following week, was offered a spot for surgery 3 days later. Pretty fast, but the system is confusing and opaque. I complained vociferously to the doctors in my family. Basically they have a sales quota to meet which requires them to work long billable hours. One told me the Cleveland Clinic has a very efficient system. Why don’t other hospitals copy it? The answer was a bunch of lame excuses. Basically, hospital management is usually excellent MDs but incompetent business people.

After hours of discussion, my conclusion is it’s easy to make incremental improvements to the current system because it so obviously sucks. But it needs a revolution to handle universal health care.