Howard Dean on Health Care

Jezebel has a long excerpt from an Esquire interview about health care with Howard Dean. As Jezebel writes: "Dean is suggesting that health care, like national defense, is a social good that will never properly be accounted for by the market because its intrinsic value is borne by too broad a segment of the population. Market failures — like the poor valuation of social goods like defense and education — are accounted for in economic philosophy by having government provide them to people by spreading the costs as widely as the benefits."

Then there's this from the interview:

ESQ: But isn't that a threat to the insurance companies? Especially at a time when we want to keep businesses healthy and people employed?

HD: This is one of the many problems the Senate is now having. They are focused on anything but the American people. But the insurance companies will be fine. It won't happen overnight, and they'll make plenty of money. But this is not a matter of making the insurance companies happy. This is a matter of making the 72 percent of the people who want a public option happy, including the 50 percent of Republicans who want a public option.

Can I just say? I'm SO TIRED of insurance companies.