I was surprised to read John McClaughry’s positive description of the Singapore health care system (“Let’s reopen the health care debate”). As far as I know, Singapore imposes far more government control over its citizens than Mr. McClaughry can usually tolerate.
This includes both health care directly, with mandatory health insurance mandatory savings plans, and plentiful subsidies to ease the pain of out-of-pocket costs, and programs that indirectly affect health care, like ensuring adequate housing (more than 80% of the people are housed through the nation’s Housing and Development Board).
One recent review of Singapore’s health care takes pains to point out some crucial social differences between the U.S. and Singapore that impact health care policies: “Singapore has an often discussed social compact between its government and citizens. For health care, this translates into a true safety net and affordable care provided by the state, an acceptance by citizens of individual responsibility for their health, and a willingness by individuals to relinquish some autonomy for the greater good — again, tenets we (in the U.S.) don’t have.”
Dare I hope that Mr. McClaughry and his associates in the Vermont libertarian community have begun to see the value of “relinquishing some autonomy for the common good”?
Lee Russ
Bennington
