Emergency Room

It’s my fifth hour at the E.R. and I’ve just asked Claude: Why is the E.R. so bad? Why can’t they

• Send you to a hospital with spare capacity
• Send you home and call you when they’re ready for you
• Let you pay for faster treatment
• Do simple treatments in a common area (since the lack of “rooms” seems to be the main bottleneck)

It told me these measures could be “problematic from a medical and ethical perspective” and cited privacy concerns, record-keeping requirements, and “fundamental” fairness.

Right, yes, in a way this does answer my question: probably the reason we don’t have better E.R.s is the popularity of this kind of illogical “good is the enemy of the perfect” thinking. I just thought my beloved AI companion was a bit wiser than that.

I am very hungry.

Update: The front desk clerk gave me a Cup O' Noodles and a box of cookies. What a hero!