Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, a liberal Democrat, says decisions about health care should rest with the federal government, not with individual employers who pay for their workers’ health insurance.
“So, you know, this is one country,” Dean told CNN’s “State of the Union” with Candy Crowley on Sunday. “We all have to live by a set of things that are passed in Washington and agreed to by the court. We’ll see what the court does, but I don’t think a particular employer has a right to decide what kind of health care their employees are going to get. That’s now in the hands of the federal government, and that’s where it should be.”
Dean was talking about the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to hear Hobby Lobby’s challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s birth control-abortion-sterilization mandate. The store’s owners are devout Catholics who argue that the government cannot compel them to violate their deeply held religious beliefs.