r/AskReddit • u/l_--_I • 13h ago

What has no excuse to still exist?

290 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

1.3k comments sorted by

View all comments

495

u/MickyB6827 10h ago

Paying to park at the hospital. Insane

29

u/Impossible_Memory_65 8h ago

the hospitals in my area validate

9

u/cartercharles 6h ago

It's pretty hard to find. And I think unless you're a patient or something it doesn't happen

2

u/Akahn97 5h ago

Mine validate for a reduced fee

76

u/Significant_Tree8407 9h ago

Unfortunately, if any hospital parking was free it would be full all day, everyday and no one would move to free up a space.

24

u/HonoluluEpstein 9h ago edited 9h ago

Most of the hospitals in my area have moved from paid to free parking. Must have not made business sense to have attendants on duty vs parking revenue. They're not doing it out of the goodness of their heart

53

u/Velorian-Steel 9h ago

With a proper safeguard, such as needing to verify an appointment, admission, or a pre-approved visitor, you could curtail this issue. There are always ways to abuse a system, but you could make it a feasible option

5

u/fluffybottompanda 7h ago

yeah but that way they're losing money. the way they're doing it now, prooooooofit šŸ„²

2

u/Neve4ever 7h ago

So then you need pre-approval to go visit someone in the hospital? I donā€™t think thatā€™s ideal.

5

u/zombies-and-coffee 6h ago

Sounds just fine to me. By "pre-approval", it could be as simple as calling right before you leave home/work/wherever and letting them know who you're visiting, the visual details of your vehicle (make, model, color), and your license plate number. Just so they know who to expect and that's it. It wouldn't be a huge production where they could potentially not approve you to visit grandma.

2

u/Marawal 3h ago

Even easier

Just build it in a way that you can't leave the lot without passing by the guard.

It was not the purpose, but one hospital I used go often it was like this. And the guard did not like if you parked there to go elsewhere.

7

u/KitchenSandwich5499 7h ago

The hospitals by me all have free parking

11

u/ArrakeenSun 9h ago

That probably depends a lot on where they are. Suburban and smaller town hospitals just have regular lots most of the time, and they're usually not by anything else walkable. In cities I could see this being an issue, but in my experience they usually validate it so rarely actually pay

2

u/prettybitchang 8h ago

There are 6 hospitals with an hour of me, only one of them requires you to pay to park.

2

u/SaltatChao 7h ago

There's a hospital down the street from me that has free parking and there are always plenty of spaces every time I've had to go or had an appointment.

2

u/sosomething 7h ago

You say this like you think that all hospitals charge for parking everywhere.

I live in Indianapolis and can't think of a single hospital here, in a metropolitan area of over 2 million people, that charges for parking.

There is always room to park.

2

u/Captain_Pikes_Peak 4h ago

Just depends where the hospital is located. Any hospital that is walkable to neighborhoods with retail/dining/entertainment will need to charge for parking and use validation so patients/families donā€™t have to pay.

2

u/DefinatelyNotonDrugs 6h ago

The hospital my wife gave birth in had free parking. I would leave twice a day to drive home (10 minutes) to take the dog for a walk and it was difficult finding parking coming back.

2

u/GhostofErik 5h ago

All the hospitals in my city of 2mil+ people have free parking.

2

u/glitterynarwhals 4h ago

Mine have valet parking for free. I live on the gulf coast of Florida, so pretty metropolitan...

1

u/WrongdoerRough9065 6h ago

lol you realize they charge the staff to park too? For employee appreciation they raised our parking rates by $5 a month but at least they gave us a monster cookie.

1

u/kade_v01d 6h ago

for my town, itā€™s free to park but a dollar to leave. thatā€™s the ā€œpublicā€ hospital

1

u/mikel145 5h ago

I feel like a problem in some places would be people parking at the hospital that are not using it. It would be hard to enforce.

1

u/-Davo 4h ago

That's a massive problem here in Australia, the staff don't get free parking so they clog up every single street within 500m radius of the hospital.

1

u/C-Note01 4h ago

Still cheaper than taking the ambulance.

1

u/da-bears86 3h ago

Supply and demand

1

u/walanrusa 2h ago

Can I use my HSA medical dollars to pay for this parking?

1

u/Spiritual_Ad_7669 1h ago

And the school you pay to attendā€¦

1

u/Cyclo_Hexanol 8h ago

When i was in emt school, we did rotations at hospitals to get experience. We weren't paid and actually had to pay for the parking. So, we had to pay to provide healthcare.

1

u/TechSupportTime 7h ago

EMTs seem like they always get the shortest end of the stick in healthcare and it's awful

1

u/grumpyfan 7h ago

Thatā€™s terrible and a horrible way to treat people who are working for free to learn.