Health care in Singapore

Interesting article in Tuesday's WSJ about health care in Singapore, which spends 4% of GDP on health care (vs 15%+ in US) and gets comparable outcomes. A couple of interesting differences: (1) more weight is given to consumer choice via required medical savings account and different levels of hospital rooms (same care in all levels, but if you want to save money you can give up some privacy) and (2) a greater role for competition between doctors and hospitals for patients (although not much detail in the article on how this works). Procedures cost about one-third of their level in the US. I am sure there is more complexity that this article omits but this is a good example of using global comparisons to gain insights into our own system.