Republican politicians may offer pandering promises of lower deductibles and co-pays, but the coherent conservative position is
that cheaper plans with higher deductibles are a very good thing, because they’re much closer to what insurance ought to be — and the more they proliferate, the cheaper health care will ultimately be for everyone.
Singaporeans pay for much of their own care out of their own pockets,
and their major insurance program is designed to cover long-term illnesses and prolonged hospitalizations, not routine care.
Second, their catastrophic insurance doesn’t come from a bevy of competing health insurance companies,
but from a government-run single-payer system, MediShield.
And the results are, again, extremely impressive: By forcing its citizens to save
and manage their own spending, the Singaporean system seems to free up an awful lot of money to spend on goods besides health care over the longer haul of life.
