Obama hits McCain on healthcare

With lack of regulations blamed by many for the Wall Street meltdown, Barack Obama is trying to punish Republican rival John McCain for his proposals to open Social Security and healthcare to more market competition.

Obama slammed McCain's support for private savings accounts in speeches over the weekend. And today, he launched a new TV ad on his backing for allowing families to buy health insurance plans in other states.

"We’ve seen what Bush-McCain policies have done to our economy," the announcer says, as images of failed Wall Street firms appear.

"Now John McCain wants to do the same to our health care," the announcer continues. "McCain just published an article praising Wall Street deregulation, said he’d reduce oversight of the health insurance industry, too, just 'as we have done over the last decade in banking.'

"Increasing costs and threatening coverage, a prescription for disaster," the announcer says, citing a Boston Globe editorial on Sunday criticizing McCain's healthcare plan. "John McCain, a risk we just can’t afford to take."

McCain's campaign disputes the ad, saying that his comments on the issue have been distorted.

“This is absurd," Doug Holtz-Eakin, his senior economic advisor, said in a statement. "If Barack Obama thinks that today’s financial troubles were caused by policies which allowed Americans to use an ATM anywhere in this country, then it is better that he continue to be silent about solutions to the crisis on Wall Street. That crisis arose from corruption and regulators asleep at the switch. It's also possible Senator Obama is simply a dishonest politician who will say anything to get himself elected and just isn’t ready to be President.”

At issue is an article that McCain wrote for the September/October issue of Contingencies magazine.

In it, he writes, "I would also allow individuals to choose to purchase health insurance across state lines, when they can find more affordable and attractive products elsewhere that they prefer. 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."