Singapore's Health Care System

One of the more forceful arguments being put forth by those opposed to reforming the American health care system is that the United States has the best health care in the world. Anyone who raises the question of whether this is true or not is quickly shot down as unpatriotic or an American-hater.

But numbers mean things, even when we don't like what they say. Do we really have a better system, which leads to us living longer, in better health, with top rankings in most of the key performance indicators that other countries also use to measure how they're doing?

No so much.

Via The League of Ordinary Gentlemen, a look at how we compare to Singapore:

Here are some comparisons: Life expectancy at birth in the United States is 78 years; in Singapore, 82 years. The U.S. infant mortality rate is 6.4 deaths per 1,000 live births; in Singapore, just 2.3 deaths per 1,000. But the United States has far more caregivers: 2.6 physicians per 1,000 people, compared with 1.4 physicians in Singapore. The United States has 9.4 nurses per 1,000 people; Singapore, 4.2. And it has six times as many dentists as Singapore and three times as many pharmacists.

Perhaps the answer lays within the concept that Singapore doesn't view people's medical care as a profit-at-all-cost model and actually focuses on doctors and patients.

Image by Christopher Chan via flickr