Don't Overhype Missouri's Anti-Health Reform Vote

Nothing about Missouri's Proposition C vote suggests that the GOP will be able to rally support for a repeal of the individual mandate.

The Proposition C vote in Missouri may be a classic case of there being less than meets the eye. To begin with, independents did not vote in the primary, so we still don’t know how public opinion on health care and specifically the individual mandate splits among those crucial swing voters. Then, while the 71% vote against the individual mandate looks impressive, it should be remembered that 65% of the primary voters were Republicans. So in reality we only know that a small minority of Democrats oppose the individual mandate. Nothing new here: Obamacare has never had unanimous support among Democrats (that’s why the vote in the House was a squeaker despite the large Democratic majority), and the individual mandate is probably the most unpopular part of the entire reform (incidentally, if the Republicans are unable to rally overwhelming public opposition to the individual mandate, they really have no chance of repealing other, more popular parts of Obamacare).

What’s being left out virtually of all (conservative) discussions of the Missouri vote is the fact that the individual mandate is a prerequisite for forcing insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions. I would be really curious to see the result of a referendum asking the voters “Should insurance companies be allowed to exclude pre-existing conditions?” I suspect even a lot of Republicans would vote ‘No’ (just for the record, I would vote ‘Yes’). Yet if the GOP wants to repeal the individual mandate, it also has to repeal the exclusion ban. And the vote on Proposition C does not provide much evidence about the feasibility of such a repeal.