Emergency care becoming the new primary care?

On CNN's On The Chart blog, the author focuses on the possibility that emergency care has become the new primary care center in America. Citing September's issue of Health Affairs, it appears that less than half of the 345 million annual visits for acute-care problems take place with one's personal physician. Nearly a third of these visits occur in the E.R., with an enormous chunk of these occurrences not really fitting a true definition of the word "emergency".

The author believes that providing health insurance for a country's people is a basic tenet of a civilized society and questions the priorities of those who are looking to chip at the recently passed health care legislation.