Come for the tapdance on ObamaCare, stick around for Howard Dean’s fantasy predictions in the Senate races this November. The clip picks up with Howard Dean discussing the meaning of the Missouri vote that had 71% of the electorate registering their opposition to the ObamaCare mandate to buy health insurance. Not to worry, Dean says, because the mandate was never going to survive anyway — and he notes offhandedly that it’s almost certainly unconstitutional:
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Who benefits from the mandate? Well, Dean’s right that insurers do, but without the mandate and with the federal requirement to issue health insurance to all comers, the risk pools will get very expensive indeed. Health insurers operate on a thin margin as is (traditionally between 2-6%), and adding higher risk without balancing it out with healthier subscribers means higher costs. Either insurers will have to hike rates or offer fewer services — and if the government blocks them from either or both options through further coverage mandates and price controls, they’ll simply go out of business.
That’s the reason why the mandate is key to the bill’s survival. Without it, Congress has to go back to square one.
The Senate predictions sound like a milder replay of the Dean Scream from January 2004. There certainly is an antincumbent mood, but it’s most definitely not bipartisan in its targets. Poll after poll shows voters getting angry at the Democratic agenda and at Democratic malfeasance, and while one or two Republican seats might get lost, the overall results from the midterms will be a significant pickup of seats — and not a Republican net loss of “four or five.”
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