Singapore’s health care system is distinctive, and not just because of the improbability that it’s admired by many on the American left as well as the right.

It spends less of its economy on health care than any country that was included in our recent tournament on best health systems in the world.

And it spends far, far less than the United States does. Yet it achieves some outcomes Americans would find remarkable. Life expectancy at birth is two to three years longer than in Britain or the United States. Its infant mortality rate is among the lowest in the world, about half that of the United States, and just over half that of Britain, Australia, Canada and France. General mortality rates are impressive compared with pretty much all other countries as well.

When the World Health Organization ranked health care systems in 2000, it placed the United States 37th in quality; Singapore ranked sixth.