Quote Originally Posted by thcbongman
That should be the key word here. What is a true emergency? Let's get into the grey area. Infact one thing you perceive as minor, a UTI, a problem where I had to go to the emergency room for. At the time I was battling cancer and while I was recovering through chemo, I felt major pain, which ended up being a UTI. At the time I didn't know it was something relatively minor. But being in a situation like mine, you don't know if that pain could be something else. Would that be abuse of the system? Or merely a legitimate concern? Or another situation. I had low-blood pressure, fainted twice for no reason and had blurred vision and acute headaches for a week. I saw my oncologist and he gave me an order for an MRI and told me to walk into ER. Ended up being nothing. Would you consider that abuse of the system?

With that, it's hard to quantify abuse because you don't know the individual's medical history. So the instances would be quantified as abuse based on fact alone. The underlying circumstance of my situation justifies it and I'm certain in many of those cases, their are circumstances that justify their visit.
1. You were a cancer patient and fall in lines with other people with debilitating diseases. The people I am referring to that abuse the ER that I have had some insight on (without having their personal records or names disclosed to me) do not have this problem. Your situation is entirely different and is not what i'm talking about.

2. Being told by your doctor to walk down to the ER and get an MRI is completely different from just walking into the ER because you're passing a kidney stone; you know you're passing it but want some pain pills to tide you over with no other ailments being wrong with you.

you made the assumption that I was assuming.. rofl if that makes any sense. Again; I get my info from paramedics, nurses and doctors. Names are not disclosed but I hear time and time again about abuse in the ER. The amount of money it costs when 1 out of 10 people abuse the system is still an enormous amount.

I by no means insinuated that 8 out of 10 are abusing the system; but I would say going by the information I get from others in the field.. that it's about 1 in 10 or fractionally higher.