Assuming you have a reasonable doctor and let yourself be guided by his recommendations, your bump-on-the-head visits are going to be an hour of you waiting in the waiting room, and five minutes of a nurse taking your blood pressure and the doctor asking you a couple of questions. Billing their time at $240 / hour, you've used up $20 of medical resources, plus a few bucks for the gloves and popsicle sticks they use during the exam.

If every man, woman, and child in the US went into the doctor every month for a bump or a cough, the total cost would be significant in absolute terms -- $72 billion -- but insignificant in the grand scheme of things; $72 billion is less than 3% of current US healthcare spending.

What happens when you try to "walk off" something you think is minor, and you're in the ER 24-72 hours later? Hello $20K-$50K bill.

My wife and I were in a car accident a year ago (someone turned in front of us while we were doing 40mph). My wife required an ambulance for transportation due to damage to her right foot. The ambulance didn't exactly let us compare prices and pick which hospital to go to.