I have a family member who used to be the director of an urban area's primary emergency department. (Now retired.) At some point he and his administrative staf

I have a family member who used to be the director of an urban area's primary emergency department. (Now retired.) At some point he and his administrative staff saw a similar trend, and also figured out that their top 10 most expensive patients were all people who had chronic health conditions and no health insurance or medicaid. Not having health insurance meant they couldn't effectively manage their conditions, which meant they were repeatedly getting to a crisis point and having a family member call an ambulance. Which is just incredibly expensive - all emergency services are - and of course if they couldn't pay out of pocket for a family physician then they couldn't pay for emergency services, either. The solution was to start just paying out of the ED's own budget for these folks to see regular care providers, buying them their medications, arranging cab rides, etc. It saved the hospital millions per year.