Posted By James Flanagan
Here is a service I found out about recently:
Patients pay US$24.99 per visit for someone to wait in line for them. According to the company, in 75% of cases the patients will be seen immediately upon arrival, in the remaining 25% the patient sees a doctor within 15 minutes. Currently the service only works at 3 hospitals. I don’t need to state the obvious about a multi-tier system that this promotes.
This reminds me of a story concerning how lobbyists in the US can pay the homeless, but not only them, to stand in line for them at hearings held by Congress. You can check out that story from The Daily Beast here: Some interesting numbers:
- a single seat can go for $3,500 companies who are willing to pay for it, meaning smaller groups are assured not to be the 1st in line
- people who stand in line can get 35$ to 45$, bike messengers will get 50% of that, while the homeless will get $11
Now obviously the market for standing in line for a Congressional hearing is not the same as the one for the ER in , but I’m not aware of another market for standing in line. Does anyone else have one?
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