People would be far less likely to overuse health services if they felt they were paying personally.
That's a powerful idea.
Here's the quote.
In a 1995 paper in Health Affairs, William Hsiao looked at how health spending fared in Singapore before and after the introduction of Medisave. He found that health care spending increased after the introduction of increased cost-sharing, which is not what most proponents of such changes would expect.
From the end of the article:
> [American] Conservatives will point to the Medisave accounts and the emphasis on individual contributions, but ignore the heavy government involvement and regulation. Liberals will point to the public’s ability to hold down costs and achieve quality, but ignore the class system or the system’s reliance on individual decision-making.
No data to back it up, might be wrong.
I can tell you I absolutely loathe pouring money into health insurers to prop up an overused and wasteful system. I'd much rather something like this personal account idea.