It may have been in reference to Singapore's results, per TFA:

> With Singapore’s citizenry empowered by deductible security and price tags, competition has worked its magic, forcing providers to constantly figure out ways to lower costs and improve quality. The result is not only 77% less spending than the United States but also, as Bloomberg Businessweek reports, one of the healthiest populations in the world.

It is mostly pulled out of a backside though, because without much evidence it attributes that 77% decrease in spending to a couple of cherry picked difference between the systems.

Overall it would plausibly help, but it's a pretty strong claim that these are the only important differences.

It ignores the 30 point gap in obesity - 6% for Singapore, 36% for the US - which is obviously a big contributor to the US healthcare cost problem. 36% obesity is an extreme elephant on the table for costs. I would be surprised if the US couldn't shave 1/5 off its healthcare costs with a 22% obesity rate (comparable to Germany, Brazil, Poland, France, Sweden, Netherlands, Finland, Norway, Austria, Spain, Russia, etc).

Singapore vs Japan and South Korea is a more interesting comparison (similarly very low obesity rates) between costs in developed health care systems, if you wanted to see which worked better. Japan for example has a spiraling healthcare cost problem related to its aging population.