Adele Ferguson - Why people wind up in emergency rooms

A BELIEF I HAVE held for years as to a prime reason for the high cost of health care got knocked for a loop the other day by a news story in USA Today.

It is not vast numbers of people without health insurance who take their health problems to emergency rooms because they know the law mandates treatment whether they can pay for it or not. This way, I reasoned, they avoided doctor bills and the taxpayers got stuck for the much, much higher cost of the ER.

But it has nothing to do with insurance.

“People come to the ER when they need to come to the ER,” says Angela Gardner. president of the Amer...