It feels high to me because most ER cases should be obvious i.e. heart attacks, car accidents and strokes etc. So if say 10% of cases are non standard then 2% overall is 20% off that.
We don't have an anti-heart attack pill. Medicine hasn't developed the post-car-accident protocol. Strokes vary so much in type that they can go unrecognized by competent doctors for years.
The ER functions as primary care for a large percentage of the population. They see far far more than the kinds of thing a rational person with health insurance thinks of when they think about medical problems they’d go to the ER for.
