You'd be surprised how much "emergency care" covers. A lot of people just end up going to the emergency room for colds, mild flu, persistent mild pains, etc. W

You'd be surprised how much "emergency care" covers. A lot of people just end up going to the emergency room for colds, mild flu, persistent mild pains, etc. When Jimbob goes to the emergency room at his local hospital because he has a cough that just will not go away, he's probably going to walk out of there with a script for some cough syrup or antibiotics and not a lung cancer diagnosis. Either way, he's there, it's made him miserable enough to get up and go somewhere, and he's very unlikely to want to leave without some sort of proposed solution to his problem. So he'll pay what the provider puts on the paper without shopping around. Should he go to an urgent care center or make an appointment with a PCP? Absolutely. But he didn't. And there's millions of Jimbobs. And that's before getting into the "frequent fliers" who are on the fringes of society and see a visit to the emergency room as a guaranteed way to experience at least some human compassion.