Dive Brief:

• The American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) released a video yesterday in response to a recent Cigna video ad that uses actors who have played physicians on TV as a humor-tinged marketing effort.

• ACEP states payers of taking advantage of a federal mandate "to reduce coverage for emergency care knowing emergency departments have a federal mandate to care for all patients, regardless of their ability to pay."

• While meant to be fun, ACEP President Rebecca Parker wants to bring to light the issue of fair coverage, or lack thereof, in emergency medical care.

Dive Insight:

While the videos from both Cigna and the ACEP are lighthearted (both are posted below), they point to a deep divide between payers and hospitals.

The videos are ostensibly about reliance on emergency care versus preventive care. Emergency care is expensive compared with care delivered in other settings, but accounts for a relatively small amount of total healthcare spending, as MedCity News reported. For example, MedCity News cited a National Institutes of Health-funded study from 2013 that found a trip to the ER for any of 10 outpatient conditions could cost $1,233.

ACEP itself states emergency care "represents less than 2% of the nation’s $2.4 trillion in healthcare expenditures while covering 136 million people a year." The organization notes on an online fact sheet that the most pressing economic issue for emergency medicine is uncompensated care.

"Many people don't realize how little insurance coverage they have until they visit the ER, and then they are shocked at how little their insurance company pays," Parker said in a prepared statement. "The $9 million Cigna spent on an ad starring well-loved actors playing physicians would have been better spent on patients. Emergency physicians fight hard for their patients who are bearing an increasingly large share of the burden for their medical care."

Here are the videos you've been waiting for: