The experience with credit card deregulation should put the lie to the idea that selling across state lines results in meaningful competition and better product

The experience with credit card deregulation should put the lie to the idea that selling across state lines results in meaningful competition and better products. After the Supreme Court ruled that credit cards could be issued across state lines, the issuers migrated to states with the weakest consumer protections. As expected, this was followed by a series of abuses: credit card issuers would raise rates without warning, hiked late and overlimit fees, and buried key information in fine print to obscure the true cost. It fell to the federal government to impose stronger consumer protections, via the CARD Act. Much of the ACA was concerned with strengthening consumer protections by ending policies like rescission, lifetime limits, or denial for pre-existing conditions. If we were to repeal the ACA and allow selling across state lines, we should expect the re-introduction of these policies and worse.