The analysis helps to explain the low tax rate, and the price control in Sgp public healthcare infrastructure. These factors are actually fundamental to my long-term (retirement) confidence in  Sgp’s healthcare affordability.

— Sgp public healthcare expenditure .. 2021 StraitsTimes: “Mr Ong [MOH] said healthcare expenditure is set to hit $59.1 billion in 2030, up from $20.7 billion in 2018 and $10.5 billion in 2010. The 2030 figure will form about 16 per cent of the Government’s yearly Budget, up from 12 per cent currently.”

— based on https://reason.com/2020/12/12/singapore-is-not-the-model-for-a-more-libertarian-america/

Lee Kuan Yew regarded with disdain both “free” government-provided health care and what he saw as grossly inefficient private models.

Lee said of Britain’s NHS (National Health Service) in a 2001 interview with PBS. “These are scarce resources. You’ve only got a limited number of top-class surgeons or doctors, and if you promise everybody that they are entitled to the same treatment, it’s just not practical.”

Lee wrote “American-style medical insurance schemes are expensive, with high premiums because of wasteful and extravagant diagnostic tests paid for out of insurance.”

Singapore has found that making patients pay a nominal amount for every type of medical service discourages unnecessary consumption, and that the spectrum of service upgrades — from shorter wait times to one-person wards — allows prices to work as a /mechanism/ for allocating resources.