Health Care Systems Try to Cut Costs by Aiding the Poor and Troubled

The New York Times: MINNEAPOLIS — Jerome Pate, a homeless alcoholic, went to the emergency room when he was cold. He went when he needed a safe place to sleep. He went when he was hungry, or drunk, or suicidal.

“I’d go sometimes just to have a place to be,” he said.

He made 17 emergency room visits in just four months last year, a costly spree that landed him in the middle of an experiment to reinvent health care for the hardest-to-help patients here in Hennepin County.

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