Headless,
So you'd support just copying the Singaporean system? Or is that 80 percent payment too communist despite the results?
It seems like now what you're doing is relabelling the least socialist system as a market based one, and then concluding that the U.S. must be more efficient since it's even more privatized. But obviously that's not the case. Your ideology is confusing your analysis.
You're not making sense. The least socialist system (if by that you mean Singapore) employs a mostly market-based approach. There's no need to re-label it. There is plenty of government intrusion, which I don't like, but at least they intrude in minimal and sensible ways. They haven't adopted the dirt stupid universal health care systems that the rest of the industrialized world adopted, and which we in the US are desperately trying to avoid.
The Singapore government will pay 80% of your care only if you're poor. If you don't meet their strict needs test, they don't pay a dime. Even if you do qualify for government-paid care, you're still responsible for 20% of every cost you incur.
They keep costs in line by means of competition. That's the answer to BridgeWalker's question about hamburger vs steak care. In Singapore you have both options, steak-level care or hamburger-level are, with prices published publicly so that everyone can see what they're getting before they get it. It's easy to choose one over the other.
In Singapore they seem to use insurance intelligently. They use it for major medical costs, not for routine care. Insurance doesn't save anyone any money if claims are common and frequent. Insurance only works if it's used to average infrequent risks over many people.
I found another interesting link on Singapore's health care system:
The Singapore health system – achieving positive health outcomes with low expenditureWhat can be learned from the Singapore health care system?
The key to Singapore’s efficient health care system is in its emphasis on the individual to make a significant contribution towards their own healthcare costs. With this focus, the Government has been able to maintain a relatively low level of public expenditure on health for many years with the major burden put on individuals and/or their employers.
Golly, personal responsibility actually works! Not only that, it works without relying upon primarily upon the government.
I would take Singapore's health care system over Europe's in a heartbeat. There are minor details I don't like about it, but they've got the big picture right. They use price competition to force costs down. They give patients and doctors strong incentive to keep costs down and to minimize the resources consumed. They use personal savings (mandated personal savings, but still personal) to cover routine costs, and they use major medical coverage to handle the big expenses.
Singapore is definitely a step in the right direction. Universal health care a la UK or Australia is a step in the wrong direction.