Means Testing for Healthcare...US may be have no choice but to implement

Come 1 Jan 2009, Singapore public hospitals will implement means testing for admission into subsidised wards class B2 and C. The idea behind much an implementation is to better target limited government funding to the more needy, i.e. the more needy will get higher government subsidy and the better financially endowed will get less. Part of the motivation is also because the subsidised wards have improved significantly over the years, and even the rich find that it is value for quality to select them during hospitalisation - competing with needy for govt subsidy.

Well, this is not just a Singapore phenonmenon. The US Medicare which reimburses elderly over 65 years for their healthcare expenses is widely expected to run into financial difficulty over the next 15 years. To sustain the programme in its current form will necessarily bring tax to an exhorbitant rate, according the an article in the NYTimes.

Perhaps, after the November 2008 US Presidential election, will see the gradual implementation of means testing for Medicare. This will be a political hot potatoe and it is expected that neither Obama nor McCain will touch it with a 20-foot pole.

It will be interesting to see how means testing may be pulled off in the US and contrast it with how it is done in Singapore.