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In reply to the discussion: Insurance giant's new ER policy called 'dangerous' by critics. [View all]IronLionZion
(45,163 posts)if their primary care physician is unavailable for an immediate appointment or it's during off hours. If the patient doesn't know what is the problem but it feels like an emergency. Plenty of people don't know the difference between primary care, urgent care, and emergency care so the ER is often their default stop.
Perception vs reality is a big problem. If a person is having a legit life threatening emergency, they shouldn't hesitate about going to the ER. For other problems they should be able to go to urgent care or primary care or call their doctor's office to ask what to do. This process should be simpler if we had a universal single payer health care system instead of lots of different plans and providers having different processes and criteria and networks.