McCain's Prescription for Health Care: DEREGULATION

In the wake of one of the worst financial weeks in our history, it bears pointing out that John McCain favors deregulating health care just like he favored deregulating the financial market. McCain "promotes market-based competition" for health care and advocates for the same lack of oversight in that industry that tanked Wall Street this week.

In the Sept/Oct 2008 issue of Contingencies Magazine, a publication for the Amercian Academy of Actuaries, McCain has an article titled "Better Health Care at Lower Cost for Every American." Here's what he says about health care reform:

"Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation."

McCain is saying if we marketize and deregulate health care, it would yield the same success as the financial market. Given this week's fall-out, I'll bet McCain wishes he could go back and edit the article. Or given McCain's recent penchant for pandering, he'll just reincarnate himself as the great regulator of health care, like he started doing on Tuesday when talking about the economy.