Seeing some of the reasons that people go to the emergency room and the cost of going to the emergency room I can understand the reasoning behind the policy. Emergency rooms are often crowded with non-emergent ailments. The problem is there isn't any triage before being admitted to the ER. A kid with a fever and a somebody that cut off their finger get treated the same when walking into the ER. The kid with a fever might get put at low priority but the hospital is still going to charge for the visit and every doctor that stopped in to say hi.