Jonathan Cohn goes to great lengths to suggest that McCain’s proposal to allow people to buy insurance from out-of-state suppliers would lead to increased fraud. His entire argument boils down to the claim that it is easier to get help when it’s needed from an in-state regulator than from a far-away one. Maybe you think that cost of interstate competition outweighs the gains of lower-cost policies; maybe you don’t. That’s not the fish I’m frying at the moment.

Let’s go back to Cohn’s starting point. McCain had said that interstate competition in health care would yield some of the same gains that interstate competition in banking had done. Obama hit back that McCain wants to do to health care what’s been done to banking. Okay: Does Obama believe that restrictions on interstate branch banking should be brought back? Does Cohn? Or are they just grabbing any stick that happens to be nearby?