Aside from the Florida primary, the biggest news this week, and the event with the most potential to affect the 2008 presidential race, was the defeat in California of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s healthcare proposal. It foundered when the Democratic state legislature figured out that it would have cost a boatload of money. Just how much? $14.9 billion.

The Wall Street Journal points out that this is an important policy lesson. An individual or government mandated health care system is very expensive and does nothing to stem rising healthcare costs, which are the real issue. The Journal‘s editors explain:

What the California collapse should discredit in particular is the individual mandate as a policy tool for Republican reformers. This was Mr. Romney’s enthusiasm for a time, helped along by the Heritage Foundation. But in order to be enforceable, such a mandate inevitably becomes a government mandate, and a very expensive one at that.
Voters are rightly concerned about health care, but they also don’t want to pay higher taxes to finance coverage for everyone. Mr. Schwarzenegger’s spectacular failure shows that there’s an opening for Republicans to make the case for health-care reform based on choice and tax-equity, not mandates and tax hikes.

If John McCain is indeed the nominee, he will have clean hands on this issue and a market-based healthcare plan that even the Cato Institute, which has led the charge against healthcare mandates, could love. McCain will now have some powerful examples to highlight why the healthcare approach of the two potential Democratic nominees is a recipe for failure.