OPINION: McCain's Regulation Talk Sounds Subprime

Unfortunately, McCain's subsidy wouldn't come close to covering personal health care costs. A new study by the Kaiser Health Care Foundation shows that health care costs for 2007 continued to rise at a rate faster than inflation: 5%. The current cost of family coverage is $12,680 and $4,704 for an individual.

Another independent study published on healthaffairs.org describes exactly what a McCain health care world would look like:

"At its heart, the system he envisions is one in which many more -- perhaps most -- insured Americans would buy health insurance and health services in a national, relatively unregulated, competitive market, either on their own or as members of fluid, voluntary associations, such as churches or clubs."

Perhaps the biggest problem faced by consumers under such a health plan would be the loss of state regulations. The aforementioned study said:

"In a national market where state licenses are not required, insurers will charter in places where regulations are scarce--much like credit card companies do today. As a result, people guaranteed basic benefits today would find those benefits eliminated under the McCain plan. People in most states would lose access to procedural protections, such as requirements that disputed decisions by managed care plans be subject to external review."

The study concludes that McCain's plan would offer minimal immediate gains in the number of Americans covered and result in a greater number of uninsured in five years' time.

That's the dirty secret of deregulating important industries such as banking and health care -- sometimes it takes five or 10 years to figure out how bad a mistake was made -- in the case of the credit crisis, close to a trillion-dollar mistake.

Perhaps, however, one thing can be learned from the banking deregulation debacle: McCain can't be trusted to regulate either the banking or health care system.