Various insurance companies had contracts with the taxi company I drove for. Part of our usual fares were taking people to and from emergency rooms. If a person

Various insurance companies had contracts with the taxi company I drove for. Part of our usual fares were taking people to and from emergency rooms. If a person with Medicaid had a problem they'd call their insurance company, whose representative decided whether to send an ambulance or a taxi. The hospitals also had contracts to send their patients home. One pre-obamacare passenger comes to mind: she didn't have a problem that wasn't related to being poor/homeless/childhood abuse, but the E.R. couldn't address her actual problems, and gave her a prescription for "something". She waved the prescription and said, "I can't afford these pills..." The hospital sent her to her sister's apartment. I called twice to check up. She was doing okay the first time. The second time the passenger's sister said she was at the State's psychiatric hospital. A non-insurance passenger with a non-life-threatening injury asked to go to an emergency room. I suggested going to the full-service emergency room at the heart hospital. They got in & out in a fraction of the time that people usually spent at the big hospitals. I knew of that emergency room because the Fire Department had a contract with the taxi company too. They sent people who didn't need an ambulance via taxi to the nearest emergency room. That guy was homeless, iirc.