The alt only defines care needs as a public good.
Holman, 23—Master’s candidate in Public Policy, Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota (Tess, “Collective Care: Rethinking Societal Values and Envisioning Care as a Public Good,” https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/254229/Collective%20Care_%20Rethinking%20Societal%20Values%20and%20Envisioning%20Care%20as%20a%20Public%20Good.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y, dml)
Care as a public good goes beyond care provided by citizens and for citizens (Tronto, 2013); it extends to the non-human world as well. For example, clean air and water are often cited as examples of public goods, yet this paper has shown that they are in some ways exploited. If the U.S. considered care a public good and extended that to the natural world, it would change the policy analysis of environmental problems. Corporations, companies, and even individuals would have to be held responsible for harming the environment, as a clean environment would be seen as a public need to be provided for everyone.
As discussed in the very introduction, care is a vast, all-encompassing action and not all forms of care could be considered a public good. In a conversation with Joan Tronto, she noted that care needs to be distinguished into three categories: needs, wants, and desires. For the mother of a newborn, a need may be to have the time and monetary support to care for her baby. A want may be a physical space more conducive to child-rearing than her current one-bedroom apartment. A desire may be a luxury bassinet to rock the child during naps. While all of these are types of care for herself and her child, only the need would fall under the category of a public good. Further, only care needs should be the collective responsibility of the government and the public at large.