The answer depends on your personal situation.   A healthy person, who rarely needs prescriptions, can reduce the cost of their health insurance by agreeing to a health insurance plan that includes a high "deductible" on your medical costs and a high "prescription co-pay" .  This is called "cost sharing".  However, for seriously ill and chronically ill people, high levels of "cost sharing" can be disastrous.  If many of us are "just one serious illness away from bankruptcy", large deductibles on our medical expenses are very risky.   A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that "when co-payments doubled, the use of prescription drugs fell between 17% and 23% among patients with diabetes, asthma and gastric acid disease.  Meanwhile, visits to emergency rooms increased 17% for people with those conditions, and hospital stays increased 10%."  Over-treatment is not a major contributor to skyrocketing medical costs -- under-treatment has more of an impact by far.  Because sick people usually become sicker without proper treatment, they become emergency room cases, or cases where more extensive intervention is required.  The overall costs of under-treatment of sick people are reflected in increased costs of medical care for everyone, whether or not under-treated seriously ill people can afford to pay for their care.   Health insurance with excessive deductibles and co-pays (or lack of insurance) sets up a negative spiral, increasing misery and helping to drive up health care costs. Quoted text from JAMA is from Wall Street Journal (Vanessa Fuhrmans, "Higher co-pays may take a toll on health," May 19, 2004, as cited in notes of Kip Sullivan.