In December 1994, the People's Republic of China began a pilot study of medical savings accounts in the cities of Zhenjiang and Jiujiang.
It allows Singaporeans to put aside part of their income into a Medisave account to meet future personal or immediate family's hospitalization, day surgery and for certain outpatient expenses.
Under this system, Singaporean employees contribute 6–8% (depending on age group) of their monthly salaries to a personal Medisave account.
Medical savings was first introduced to the world as an alternative method of national health care financing in Singapore’s Medisave scheme as early as the 1980s.
Recently, these medical savings are used to pay for health care financing due to the exigencies of emergency spending due to the pandemic, and thus to avoid deficit funding by the government (Reference: COVID-19 poses challenges in healthcare financing, Straits Times, May 27, 2020).