Howard Dean: Health Care Mandate Doomed, Tea Party Uneasy About Diversity

Howard Dean -- doctor, former presidential candidate, former Democratic Party chairman and former Vermont governor -- says the new health care law's individual mandate requiring people to buy health insurance is doomed and not necessary for the law to succeed.

Dean offered up that unvarnished opinion and others Wednesday at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast, including his views on the upcoming White House staff shake-up and Speaker John Boehner's challenges with a tea party movement that Dean says is having trouble embracing the nation's demographic diversity.

On 2012, Dean reiterated that he will not challenge President Barack Obama in the primaries and said he hopes no one else does either. "I think it is incredibly unlikely and it would be foolish," he said. "Historically, challengers to incumbent presidents of either party don't win and they weaken their president."

As a doctor and a governor who won universal health coverage for kids in his state, Dean's greatest expertise is arguably in the health field. He said Obama was right in the 2008 campaign to present a health plan that did not contain an individual insurance mandate. In Vermont, he said, 96 percent of children under 18 are covered without a mandate -- about the same level of coverage as in Massachusetts under a universal plan that requires everyone to buy health insurance. "People will do the responsible thing for themselves and their families," he said.

Insurance companies lobbied for the mandate, arguing that healthy people are needed in the pool to keep premiums at a reasonable price. Dean said a large part of that problem was solved in the federal law by allowing adult children to stay on their parents' policies until they are 26 (they are least likely to have insurance and they are generally healthy).

Conservatives contend the requirement in the new federal law is unconstitutional and many states are challenging it in court. Dean said he thinks the requirement is constitutional but isn't compatible with the country's ingrained libertarianism. "The individual mandate, I think, is doomed," he said. "Americans can't stand being told what to do, no matter what party."

On the day the new Congress opened with a new House Republican majority, Dean said the tea party movement creates challenges for Boehner. He said the "vast majority" of people in the movement have populist economic views that are not always in line with GOP doctrine. "They aren't going to support free trade, they don't mind taxing millionaires and they really do want to balance the budget," Dean said.

Their discomfort with demographic changes is a political challenge for Boehner and the GOP, Dean said. "Every morning when they see the president they're reminded that things are totally different than they were when they were born," he said. "Economic uncertainty fuels all this. But this is the last gasp of a generation that has trouble with diversity." He added: "I don't believe these people are racists...I see it as an evolutionary thing of getting used to something that's new and different, and it's unsettling that the country has changed."

Dean said he welcomes the upcoming staff changes at the White House because the atmosphere has been characterized by "disrespect." Dean declined to specify who was disrespectful. It is well known that he and former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel disagreed on political strategy and Emanuel blocked Dean from getting an administration job. Dean praised William Daley, a former Commerce secretary who may become Obama's new chief of staff, as "a grown-up" and said he was looking forward to "adult relationships" among all the players.

Follow Jill Lawrence on Facebook and Twitter