McCain Team on Defense Over Health Care Comment

John McCain was back on the defensive over the economy yesterday, after Barack Obama accused him of touting banking deregulation in a magazine article even as Washington is scrambling to re-regulate the industry to stave off a Wall Street meltodown, the Washington Post reports. In this month's Contingencies magazine, McCain pushes for “opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking.”

McCain said this "would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation." Obama accused his GOP rival of wanting “to run health care like they've been running Wall Street. Well, Senator, I know some folks on Main Street who aren't going to think that's such a good idea.” But the McCain camp, which is promoting an increasingly populist platform attacking Wall Street corruption and greed, called the claims “absurd” and Obama “dishonest.”
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