Affordable excellence : the Singapore healthcare story : how to create and manage sustainable healthcare systems

**Winner of the 2013 Asian Publishing Award****Best Insight into Asian Societies (non-fiction): Excellence Award** This is the story of the Singapore healthcare system: how it works, how it is financed, its history, where it is going, and what lessons it may hold for national health systems around the world. Singapore ranks sixth in the world in healthcare outcomes, yet spends proportionally less on healthcare than any other high-income country. Singapore achieves its results at less than one-fourth the cost of healthcare in the United States and about half that of Western European countries. This is the first book to set out a comprehensive system-level description of healthcare in Singapore, with a view to understanding what can be learned from Singapore's unique system design and development path. The lessons from Singapore's healthcare system will be of interest to those currently planning the future of healthcare in emerging economies, as well as those engaged in the urgent debates on healthcare in the wealthier countries faced with serious long-term challenges in healthcare financing. Policymakers, legislators, public health officials responsible for healthcare systems planning, finance and operations, as well as those working on healthcare issues in universities and think tanks should understand how the Singapore system works to achieve affordable excellence.

The United States has been struggling with its health care system for decades. Costs continue to spiral upward, while coverage of the population has decreased because of job losses and the resultant loss of health benefits, due to the Great Recession and the subsequent slow economic recovery. President Clinton's attempt to enact a national health care plan failed, and the fate of President Obama's health care plan, under attack since its inception, is uncertain.

Since achieving independence, Singapore undertook the monumental task of transforming itself to a modern, prosperous, secure city-state. Many institutions needed to be erected to reach this goal, but one that stands out and is the subject of this book was the need for a world class health care system. Affordable Excellence examines how Singapore succeeded in its efforts, setting up a health system that has become one of the best in the world, delivering high quality care at a fraction of the cost of most First World systems. Ranked 6th globally on performance, Singapore spends less than 4% of GDP on health care (in contrast to the U.S., for example, which spends over 17% of GDP).

How did Singapore do it? What can be learned from its achievement? What lessons can be put to use by the developing, and the most-developed, nations building new health care systems? This book provides answers. It explores the underlying social philosophy and basic approach that Singapore used to set up its system and, at the heart of the Singapore model, its system of health savings accounts and insurance programs that ensure no one would be without the means to buy quality care.

Winner of the 2013 Asian Publishing Award Best Insight into Asian Societies (non-fiction): Excellence Award This is the story of the Singapore healthcare system: how it works, how it is financed, its history, where it is going, and what lessons it may hold for national health systems around the world. Singapore ranks sixth in the world in healthcare outcomes, yet spends proportionally less on healthcare than any other high-income country. Singapore achieves its results at less than one-fourth the cost of healthcare in the United States and about half that of Western European countries. This is the first book to set out a comprehensive system-level description of healthcare in Singapore, with a view to understanding what can be learned from Singapore's unique system design and development path. The lessons from Singapore's healthcare system will be of interest to those currently planning the future of healthcare in emerging economies, as well as those engaged in the urgent debates on healthcare in the wealthier countries faced with serious long-term challenges in healthcare financing. Policymakers, legislators, public health officials responsible for healthcare systems planning, finance and operations, as well as those working on healthcare issues in universities and think tanks should understand how the Singapore system works to achieve affordable excellence. This is the story of the Singapore healthcare system: how it works, how it is financed, its history, where it is going, and what lessons it may hold for national health systems around the world. Singapore ranks sixth in the world in healthcare outcomes, yet spends proportionally less on healthcare than any other high-income country. This is the first book to set out a comprehensive system-level description of healthcare in Singapore, with a view to understanding what can be learned from its unique system design and development path. The lessons from Singapore will be of interest to those currently planning the future of healthcare in emerging economies, as well as those engaged in the urgent debates on healthcare in the wealthier countries faced with serious long-term challenges in healthcare financing. Policymakers, legislators, public health officials responsible for healthcare systems planning, finance and operations, as well as those working on healthcare issues in universities and think tanks should understand how the Singapore system works to achieve affordable excellence. "This is the story of the Singapore healthcare system: how it works, how it is financed, its history, where it is going, and what lessons it may hold for national health systems around the world. Singapore ranks sixth in the world in healthcare outcomes, yet spends proportionally less on healthcare than any other high-income country. Singapore achieves its results at less than one-fourth the cost of healthcare in the United States and about half that of Western European countries. This is the first book to set out a comprehensive system-level description of healthcare in Singapore, with a view to understanding what can be learned from Singapore's unique system design and development path."--Publisher's website Title Page 2 Copyright Page 3 Contents 4 List of Illustrations 5 Acknowledgements 8 Introduction 11 Chapter 1 - The Singapore Healthcare System: An Overview 14 Chapter 2 - High Quality, Low Cost 31 Chapter 3 - Helping Patients Pay 55 Chapter 4 - Controlling Costs 86 Chapter 5 - Financing 108 Chapter 6 - Design and Infrastructure 119 Chapter 7 - Investing in the Future through Medical Education and Research 134 Chapter 8 - Facing the Future 160 Appendix 176 Notes 182 Bibliography 193 Index 202 Back Cover 214