McCain: Deregulate health care same as banks or "Yeah but, no but, yeah but, no but, yes, actually yes." . .

An important part of his plan is to use competition to improve the quality of health insurance with greater variety to match people's needs, lower prices, and portability. Families should be able to purchase health insurance nationwide, across state lines.

"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."

``the fundamentals of our economy are strong.''

"So let me get this straight -- he wants to run health care like they've been running Wall Street," Obama told the audience. "Well, Senator, I know some folks on Main Street who aren't going to think that's such a good idea."

"This is absurd," McCain senior economics adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin wrote in an e-mail sent to reporters. "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."

"Nationwide insurance markets that ensure broad and vigorous competition will wring out excess costs, overhead, and bloated executive compensation."

But the numbers are misleading, said John Goodman, president of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a right-leaning Dallas-based think tank. Mr. Goodman, who helped craft Sen. John McCain's health care policy, said anyone with access to an emergency room effectively has insurance, albeit the government acts as the payer of last resort. (Hospital emergency rooms by law cannot turn away a patient in need of immediate care.)

"So I have a solution. And it will cost not one thin dime," Mr. Goodman said. "The next president of the United States should sign an executive order requiring the Census Bureau to cease and desist from describing any American – even illegal aliens – as uninsured. Instead, the bureau should categorize people according to the likely source of payment should they need care.

"So, there you have it. Voila! Problem solved."

CAMDEN, South Carolina (CNN) -- Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, told CNN Wednesday he agrees with President Bush's veto of legislation expanding a children's health insurance program, saying the bill provided a "phony smoke and mirrors way of paying for it."

Sen. John McCain says the president was right to veto the expansion of a children's health insurance program.

"Right call by the president," the Republican White House hopeful told CNN's John King. "We've laid a debt on these same children ... that we're saying we're going to give health insurance to."

"...this is a mental recession . . . We have sort of become a nation of whiners,"

McCain singled out Gramm, among others, at a dinner Thursday night honoring more than 200 people who have raised at least $100,000 for his campaign.

"Thank you, Phil, for all your friendship and support," McCain said.