From this article. https://hbr.org/2019/02/to-reduce-emergency-room-wait-times-...

"Patients who arrive at EDs with broken bones wait a painful 54 minutes, on average, before receiving any pain medication."

That sounds like a dream to me. 54 minutes is nothing. My friend's wife waited over 8 hours to be seen after cutting through nerves and tendons in her hand. Then she waited 3 days for surgery. After being seen, the doctors told her not to eat. They told her to drive 3 hours to the next City as the local hospital could not perform the operation. When she got there she waited days. Her husband had driven down with their two toddlers and had was not allowed in the hospital due to Covid restrictions. She was pregnant and went days without food waiting for care. This was a little over a week ago.

I had a suspected aneurysm almost a year ago. I woke up with an incredible headache. I waited over 6 hours for a CT scan. That was a high priority triage. I still waited for hours.

I'm not saying the US system is perfect. I don't even know if it's better but I do know our system is broken.