demanded by our culture. Our expectation as a society is that at any hour, in any place in the country, one should be able to show up with any conceivable problem, ranging from a cold to a heart attack, and have it taken care of with the most up-to-date and advanced medical technology that exists. That is what we expect.

That also costs money. To get all of that above, you've got to have ER docs, surgeons, nurses, techs, and all the other staff either in house or on call 24:7. You've got to have people working the floors and manning the helicopters to get patients on the outskirts to the main hubs when their care needs escalation. Your $2,000 stitches bill helps pay for all of that. Until we as a society decide that it's ok to let people die, health care costs, especially in the emergency room, will not go down.