Time as a Price - Predrag Rajsic - Mises Daily

Time as a Price - Predrag Rajsic - Mises Daily: "A recent study has shown that in most of [Canadian emergency rooms] the average wait time exceeds 6 hours and sometimes reaches up to 23 hours."

"constantly full waiting rooms are not an unavoidable fact of life but a product of a 'priceless' supply system, where waiting for service acts as a rationing substitute for the market price."

"Most people have some mild health-related problem most of the time, but it would not be worth it to them to wait for six hours to receive treatment. They might, however, be willing to wait 20 or 30 minutes or even an hour. The wait time is the only price they pay for the service, but if the price is too high, these people will choose not to use the service offered by the healthcare provider.

However, there are always a small number of people that would be willing to wait six or more hours because the value they put on their particular health problem is quite high. Generally, as the wait time decreases, the number of people willing to wait increases. For example, in our city of 300,000 people, I would expect far more than 5 (or even 30) persons per hour coming into the emergency waiting room if they had to wait only five minutes to receive a service and not provide any money in return."

"While paying for a service with money represents an exchange of claims over resource ownership, paying for the same service with time represents outright resource destruction. The time spent in waiting is lost forever and cannot be used in any productive activity, whereas the money paid for service could be used for purchasing goods and services that had already been produced. The time not spent in waiting could be used for the production of new resources."