Singapore Health System from this American’s Perspective — Part 1

Singapore, the country covered in this summary, is a city-state with a unitary government. Their government is a parliamentary republic based on the Westminster system. A unitary government has central control and ultimate authority. Because of Singapore’s centralized authority, it can implement changes quickly and across the board. Singapore has achieved universal health coverage through a mixed financing system (Blank, Burau, & Kuhlmann, 2017; Callick, 2008; Tikkanen, Osborn, Mossialos, Djordjevic, & Wharton, 2020).

Singapore’s health system is a variant of a social insurance type with a heavy private component. Their health care financing system is driven by the belief that all participants share responsibility for attaining sustainable universal health coverage. Singapore has a low level of public involvement in individual spending decisions and a prime focus on personal responsibility. Singapore has a seemingly good balance of cost, access, and quality, which is the triad of quality in a healthcare system (Blank et al., 2017; Haseltine, 2013; Tikkanen et al., 2020). “Singapore has merged traditional communitarian and common-good features with a very strong view of individual responsibility for health and health care” (Blank et al., 2017, p. 45). Total health expenditures of GDP for Singapore was 4.47% in 2016 (Tikkanen et al., 2020).

Over the past 40 years, since 1960, Singapore has gone from appalling health conditions to a highly modern society with a high-quality…