The ER, as is rightly pointed out, will not turn you away. But they
will present you with a nice bill for the treatment. When I suggested calling an ambulance, wifey almost burst a blood-vessel in her attempts to stop me. I'm apologise for being one of the great unwashed who can't afford $75 to see a primary care-giver much less the $150 she was telling me the ER would charge. I feel I ought also to point-out that I am pretty vague when it comes to the actual workings of most American systems such as Health Care, as I've never needed to use any of them until the past 9-10 months. So there's not much use throwing figures and statistics at me - I won't get the point. The only fact I know is that when I lived in England, I paid the equivalent of about $25 a week in National Insurance (I'm sure it'll be a lot more than that now) and whenever I needed medical advice or treatment, I just went and got it. Not saying it was a better system, not saying the treatment was better, not trying to start an argument. Just trying, unsuccessfully it seems, to say that almost anything would be better than what is available here at the moment.
btw. I'm a Lieutenant, not a chief. The avatar says so.
