What's really propping up Businessweek

I happened to glance at the cover of Businessweek and saw an amazing headline: “What’s Really Propping Up the Economy: Healthcare added 1.7 million jobs between 2001 and now. The rest of the private sector? None.” I immediately contextualized this result as a trade-off: the private enterprise model of medicine provides shitty healthcare at extremely high prices, but the duplication of labor inherent in a field of several companies competing for the same market (and probably some other, more subtle factors that I haven’t thought of) creates lots of jobs.

HMOs are the Republican New Deal, taxing sick people to fund private industry to create jobs. Discuss.

Crappy and cheap healthcare would be of more benefit to more people than crappy and expensive healthcare.