ABSTRACT
Due to certain limitations of insurance, a market health system should also include other forms of payment for access to medical services, such as direct payments, medical savings accounts, medical subscriptions, and charity, each of which is more or less different from insurance. Direct payments seem to be particularly important, as there is no third-party payer; consumers must hence be particularly careful about their expenses, and their moral hazard is thus strongly limited. Direct payments also have a positive effect on the rationality of consumer expenses and ‘force’ suppliers to reduce costs.
