As the presidential campaign entered its final round, Sen. Barack Obama launched an attack on presidential rival John McCain’s health care proposal Saturday, saying the plan would bring higher taxes for working families. One of the problems that voters have also identified in McCain’s plan is that he would offer tax credits to help families pay for their insurance, but he would pay for these credits by taxing employer-paid health care benefits.

McCain’s plan would eliminate tax breaks on employer-sponsored health care benefits and instead give Americans tax credits to seek their own plans in the private market. Individuals would get a $2,500 tax credit and families would get a $5,000 credit. The Arizona senator says his health care plan would reduce the amount most Americans spend on health care by creating more competition for insurance plans and better coverage options.

“Sen. McCain and his operatives are gambling that they can distract you with smears rather than talk to you about substance. They’d rather try to tear our campaign down than lift this country up,” McCain’s presidential rival, Sen. Barack Obama said at an event in Asheville, North Carolina.

During a 40-minute speech held in Newport News, Virginia, on Saturday, democrat Obama called McCain’s health care plan “radical” and “out of line with our basic values.” He reiterated these criticisms at the event in Asheville, North Carolina.

The McCain campaign called Obama’s attack on McCain’s health plan “cynical and deceitful.”

Under McCain’s plan, tax credits that will be given to American people in order to help them pay for insurance will be a $2,500 credit for individuals and a $5,000 credit for families, paid directly to the insurer they opt for. “It’s a shell game. He gives you a tax credit with one hand - but he raises your taxes with the other,” Obama said, citing a survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation that showed the average cost of a family health care plan is more than $12,000.

The Democrat Presidential Candidate said that under McCain’s plan, younger, healthier workers would buy cheaper insurance outside the workplace and many employers will drop their health care plans altogether.

Under Obama’s health care reform plan, a national health insurance program would be created to support individuals who do not have employer-provided health care and who don’t meet the criteria for other existing federal programs. Obama’s plan requires health care coverage for all children. He also plans to invest more in preventive services, like regular screenings and healthy lifestyle information and to modernize the current system of employer- and government-provided health care.

In Thursday’s vice presidential debate, Sen. Joe Biden, the Democratic vice presidential nominee for the November 2008 election, emphasized once again that McCain’s plan would tax your health care benefits for the first time in American history. He has called the plan a tax increase. “You won’t find one word about it on his Web site, but the McCain tax could cost you thousands or even your health care. Can you afford it?” says one of Obama’s ads.

On the other hand, a recent analysis published in the journal Health Affairs suggests that the McCain’s plan will lead employers to drop coverage for over 20 million Americans, while 21 million people would gain coverage through the individual market.