The 2004 primaries featured a duel of different and confusing healthcare plans. Coupled with the fact that most Americans don't realize congress was responsible for making the Clinton-years plans fail to materialize, the idea of healthcare lacks gravity.
What Dr. Dean can do is force the party to formulate an absolutely rock-solid plan that can then be familiarized to the public in 2006. Each major democratic candidate will aim to get elected with the plank that he or she will support this plan when the time comes, and with victories in 2008, enact it. The party will be unified on this one issue. It won't be permissable to make it a primary debate issue except against a dissenter. The major party figures will all have signed a Bill of Medical Rights in blood by then...
Then we will have a real issue in Healthcare, one that is solid. In 2004, I felt this issue was a slapdash sham, used goods because of the primary confusion on the subject. And because the Clinton years didn't see it enacted, it felt like old news. This will resurrect it. And conceivably a good enough plan could even be legislated in 2006 with the help of a few Republican swings, forcing Bush to veto it to our strategic favor.