I did the math, and thought: the worst 9 asthma cases.

A bad asthma case can send you to the ER on a pretty regular basis. A bad attack is a genuine life-threatening emergency, no matter how often it happens. Crappy clock-punching primary care physician and an HMO that makes it hard to switch or a patient with authority issues (my grandma would NEVER question to word of a doctor) and there your are, with the patient just doing as he or she is told and using the ER as it was intended.

But 8 of them were mental health issues, so now we get to blame the loonies for not making good decisions about their health care. Yeah, that makes sense...