Republican politicians may offer pandering promises of lower deductibles and co-pays, but the coherent conservative position is<br />that cheaper plans with higher deductibles are a very good thing, because they’re much closer to what insurance ought to be — and the more they proliferate, the cheaper health care will ultimately be for everyone.<br />Singaporeans pay for much of their own care out of their own pockets,<br />and their major insurance program is designed to cover long-term illnesses and prolonged hospitalizations, not routine care.<br />Second, their catastrophic insurance doesn’t come from a bevy of competing health insurance companies,<br />but from a government-run single-payer system, MediShield.<br />And the results are, again, extremely impressive: By forcing its citizens to save<br />and manage their own spending, the Singaporean system seems to free up an awful lot of money to spend on goods besides health care over the longer haul of life.
