John McCan Wants the Health Care Industry to be More Like the Banking Industry

John McCain wants the health care industry to be more like the banking industry.

This from a McCain article in Contingencies, the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries:

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.

(Hat tip to TPM and Krugman)

We've had some interesting discussions over at USNews.com's opinion section about McCain's jarring transformations, most recently from deregulator to economic populist.

But this quote -- in an article no doubt submitted to the magazine months ago -- makes stark how absurd is the latest iteration of John McCain.

As Josh Marshall puts it:

...let's admit that you could only be surprised by this statement if you were willfully ignorant to what McCain and his key advisors believe. Remember, his top economics advisor is former Sen. Phil Gramm, the legislative architect of the banking and financial services deregulation that led to the current crisis. ... The only thing jarring about the statement is the degree to which it has been overtaken by events as McCain now tries -- a la Palin the Earmark-Killer -- to rebrand himself as a Mr. Wall Street oversight and transparency when he's been pushing deregulation for 25 years.

So the question now is: What breathtaking whopper does the McCain campaign deploy to get out of this one?