Paul Krugman: Singapore Is The New Chile: Noted for August 24, 2013

Paul Krugman: Singapore Is The New Chile:

Remember the 2005 Social Security debate?… Conservatives repeatedly pointed to the example of Chile, with its privatized retirement scheme…. And then a funny thing happened: it turned out that the Chileans didn’t like their system either; it was massively reformed…. In the health reform debate, Singapore has played much the same role for conservatives that Chile played on Social Security--once again it was a small, far away country of which we know nothing, which supposedly had a wonderful health system based on free market principles. As Aaron Carroll has been pointing out, Singapore’s actual system is much less free-market, and involves much more government intervention, than legend has it. In any case, however, guess what: it turns out that Singapore isn’t happy with the system, and has just reformed it in a way that makes it much more like… Obamacare.