Last month, a town in California made headlines when it announced it would begin charging its residents for making 911 calls. For a single call, it will cost $300. However, for the more frugal individual, there is a plan that allows you to pay a $48 fee and earn an unlimited number of “free” 911 calls.

As one might expect, people everywhere were taken aback by this news.

“How can you charge someone money when they have an EMERGENCY?!?,” many, for the purpose of this blog post, likely thought to themselves.

Personally, I love the idea.

Why? I’ll explain that in a minute.

Granted, the reason behind the fee is a need for this town (Tracy, California) to close its $9 million budget deficit. In short, Tracy needs to increase revenue. However, motives aside, this fee has an excellent, excellent byproduct:

It will eliminate stupid, pointless, non-emergency calls to 911.

The number of ridiculous calls to 911 is staggering. Seriously, it’s staggering. Need a short list of examples?

Last April, a woman in Texas called 911 to report she didn’t receive enough shrimp in her fried rice at a restaurant.

In Germany, a woman once called police due to an “emergency” at her home. When officers arrived, they discovered the emergency was the woman’s husband refusing to stop watching pornography.

In 2008, San Francisco police tracked down and arrested an unemployed man who made over 27,000 prank 911 calls. The idiot’s reason for doing it? “Because it’s free.”

My personal favorite is the Florida woman last year who called police because McDonald’s had run out of Chicken McNuggets.

Do you think maybe, just maybe, these callers might have not dialed 911 had a $300 charge been attached? “Is this really that important,” they (hopefully) would have thought to themselves before putting their phone down?

Well, except for the McNugget woman. You just can’t put a price on that kind of life-or-death emergency.

Where am I going with this? Why am I just now writing about this 911 fee — a whole month after it hit the news?

Well, the correlation between 911 calls and visits to the emergency room stuck in my head.

Have you been to an emergency room lately? Gosh, it’s packed. And rightfully so — it’s where people in medical need go for emergencies. Emergencies happen, right? Yes, they do.

I can’t help but wonder how packed emergency rooms will be once “Obamacare” (if it indeed happens) happens. Suddenly, millions who did not before have health insurance will suddenly have it.

Granted, you do not need health insurance NOW in order to go to the emergency room. I realize that. If you have a medical emergency, go get help. Don’t let a little something like “no insurance” stop you.

But isn’t it possible, just possible, that people who will have otherwise thought to themselves, “it’s not that big of a deal…plus, I don’t have insurance” suddenly think, after Obamacare, “you know, it’s not that big a deal, but what the heck, I have insurance!” when finding themselves crippled with ailments like headaches, nose bleeds, splinters, Athlete’s Foot and other similiar “emergencies”?

And won’t these new visitors to the ER make it, you know, a tad more difficult for doctors and nurses and hospital staff to take care of those with legitimate emergencies?

Don’t think it will happen?

Don’t think anyone is dumb enough to go to the ER because of a splinter solely because they’re now covered by Obamacare??

In a world where people call 911 because of a shortage of Chicken McNuggets, all because the call is “free” and there are no consequences to stupidity, anything is possible.

Anything.