If I'm remembering my Greek history correctly, Aristotle's issue with democracies was rooted in elitism as much as anything, can't help but feel that quote gets interpreted differently today than in its original context.
As for the clusterfuck that was your run-in with emergency services, holy hell that's insane. The hospitals here have too many gunshot wounds show up for them to ramp ambulances and the wait times for them are usually under 10 minutes. Where I grew up was a different story but still nothing like five hours, although the ride to the hospital might take an hour or more. If it was anything serious they had to use helicopters because it'd take too long to get someone out by road.
Despite my cynicism and pessimism I somehow don't have much in the way of dismay at the future. Don't get me wrong, I think things are going to get bad in some (or many) ways but when things get bad seems to be about the only time we humans can remember how to work together to make things better. Now how do we decentralize healthcare?
I agree, things will get bad, very bad and maybe that'll pull people together but greed seems to be the order of the day from the very top to the very base of society (in different ways) and with everyone pulling in different directions it'll be difficult to get much of value done I'd say. When it all breaks down, well I guess I may be dead by then...but there's no denying the direction things are going now, one would have to be delusional not to see it.
Can't help but think of this Eddie Vedder song. Yeah, until we organize ourselves around something other than greed we're in for a hard way to go. In 2020, with the protests and all that happened here I got to see people come together and help and look after one other, "we take care of us" was one of our mantra, so I know it can be done. Too bad it seems to require extraordinary circumstances to get people to look out for something other than #1.
If everyone was on board at the same moment and it was sustained then change will happen. But it won't because people won't.