Barack Obama is hammering John McCain this week on two of McCain’s key vulnerabilities when it comes to policies affecting older Amercians: health care and Social Security. New York Times economics columnist Paul Krugman points to an article McCain just published in the journal of the American Academy of Actuaries [pdf file] touting his plan for market-based reform of the health insurance industry. In the article, McCain writes:

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.

“…as we have done over the last decade in banking…”

Bad timing, I guess–coming at the end of a week when the federal government is moving to take over a good chunk of the decimated U.S. financial services industry. Krugman writes:

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!

Obama hasn’t lost time reinforcing McCain’s record as a deregulator, saying on the stump this week (via Huffington Post)

There’s only one candidate who’s called himself “fundamentally a deregulator” when deregulation is part of the problem. My opponent actually wrote in the current issue of a health care magazine - the current issue - quote - “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 let me get this straight - he wants 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 a good idea.

On the Social Security front, Obama reminded voters at a Florida rally of McCain’s support for Social Security privatization. Obama noted–correctly–that about half of elderly women would be living below the poverty rate without Social Security; exposing Social Security benefits to the volatility of the stock market is just a bad idea. This one is worth watching:

Tags | health care, health insurance, politics