By Coconuts Hong Kong September 22, 2014 / 11:20 HKT
Bloomberg has released their annual list of the 50 most efficient healthcare systems, and Hongkongers will surely be annoyed to hear that Singapore has overtaken us for the top spot.
Italy, Japan and South Korea followed behind, while the US came in 44th(ouch, but no surprise there). See the full list here.
Singapore has increased its healthcare spending by 13 percent over the last year to deal with its aging population and to lessen the costs of healthcare to the poor, reports Bloomberg.
Jeremy Lim, the head of consulting firm Oliver Wyman & Co’s health and life sciences practice in the Asia-Pacific, says he describes Singapore’s health care system as “the least imperfect in the world”. We’re going to try that on our significant others tonight: “Honey, you’re the least imperfect person in the world.”
Hong Kong healthcare cost per capita is currently at around HKD15, 000, a whopping increase of 38 percent compared to last year. A government rep attributed this to an increase in both government and private spending (how helpful!).
We still have reason to rejoice, however, as on average, we live longer than Singaporeans: our life expectancy increased by 0.06 years to 83.5 years compared to Singapore’s 82.1 years, a 0.4 year increase compared to 2013. Hah!
The rankings are based on each country’s (or each special administrative region’s) life expectancy, the relative cost of healthcare per person compared to GDP, and the absolute cost of healthcare per person.
Photo: 401kcalculator.org
http://hongkong.coconuts.co/2014/09/22/singapore-beats-hong-kong-1-spot-ranking-most-efficient-health-care-systems
