re: #500 Obdicut

As this Kaiser report points out, the Singaporean system doesn’t handle the size elderly population that we have here in the US - and the elderly population in the US is the biggest consumer of health care.

Despite health care accounting for a low share of GDP, the Singaporean health care system is arriving at a crossroad as they face rapid growth and the challenges of cost containment as their currently young population ages and medical technology advances. The current financing of health care currently does not include long-term nursing care for the elderly since Medisave and Medishield are mainly used for acute hospital care. One of the proposals is to establish a long-term care insurance product, similar to Medishield. The government is also working towards harnessing information technology by establishing a National Health Information System that will incorporate electronic medical records across the health care system.

Singapore is trying to figure out how to pay for health care for an aging population. We’re already at that aging population threshold.