Objective To describe and analyze both the direct impact of emergency service (ES) cost sharing and the indirect impact of drug cost sharing on emergency service utilization (ESU) in health insurance plans. Methods The author searched18 electronic databases which were in the evidence-based, public health, economic and social categories, respectively, 2 grey literature review resources and Google search engine, and the retrieval time was from June 21st, 2011 to September 19th, 2011. According to the inclusion criteria, data screening and extraction were conducted by two reviewers independently, and the differences were discussed by a third person or a review group. The theme analysis was adopted to systematically analyze both the direct and indirect impacts of cost sharing on ESU. Additionally, the side effects were analyzed too. Results Among total 22 studies included, 13 described the direct impact of ESU cost sharing, while the other 9 referred to the indirect impact of drug cost sharing. There were mainly 5 categories of health plans involved in. The results showed that, ESU could respond to the cost sharing: ESU decreased when the proportion of copayment increased, and vice versa. The increase of drug copayment impaired the use of essential drugs and finally increased ESU. However, a modest ES copayment decreased the irrational ESU rather than the rational ESU. Conclusion To the insured, the increase of ES cost sharing would not decrease the rational ESU and has no adverse events, while the increase of drug cost sharing would lead to some adverse events such as the increase of ESU. To the uninsured, the impact of cost sharing needs to be further disccussed. So this review suggests, the proper ES self-payment should be introduced into the health insurance plans according to local economic status, resident income, etc.; in addition, the drug self-payment ratio should be determined cautiously.