Saturday, September 20, 2008

McCain's Lastest Cockamamie Idea: Deregulate Health Care

John McCain and his Republican cohorts would like to deregulate everything. We've seen how well that has gone in the banking industry, and the financial markets. Now McCain suggests deregulating health care. From Paul Krugman of the New York Times (also posted at Huntington Post):

.....a correspondent directs me to John McCain’s article, Better Health Care at Lower Cost for Every American, in the Sept./Oct. issue of Contingencies, the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries. Here’s what McCain has to say about the wonders of market-based health 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.

So McCain, who now poses as the scourge of Wall Street, was praising financial deregulation like 10 seconds ago — and promising that if we marketize health care, it will perform as well as the financial industry!

McCain suggests we deregulate health care. This would mean that health insurance companies would charge whatever they wish, and cover whatever they damn well please. This sounds like another idea from McCain that would just create more chaos. I'd like to know if this deregulation of health care was one of his ideas or if it came from one of his campaign staff/lobbyists.

After hearing McCain this week change his mind three times about a Wall Street bailout, I think McCain is having some major problems. I'll leave it at that.