(WKTV) - In today's "Where They Stand", we are looking at where John McCain and Barack Obama stand on the issue of Healthcare.

Barack Obama wants to institute somewhat of a "universal" healthcare plan that covers everyone, including the millions of currently uninsured.

John McCain wants to give Americans an annual tax credit of twenty five hundred dollars for individuals and five thousand dollars for families to make things more affordable so they can go into the open market and chose their own health plans.

Local John McCain campaign organizer Ray Meier says "John McCain wants to have a plan where people are really in control of their own healthcare. Through tax credits to people, give them the ability if they don't already have employer provided insurance to go into the market place, buy their own healthcare and control it."

Meier says Obama's plan is a one size fits all government run program financed by the taxpayers to the tune of some 243 billion dollars a year.

Head of the group called Mohawk Valley for Obama, Ray Bepko says "Obama's plan is not about socializing medicine, it's not about a national health insurance plan, like Canada or like England, it's about creating a uniquely American system for making sure that you and I and our children, and children's children have healthcare, it's a right."

Where will the billions of dollars come from to pay for Obama's universal healthcare plan?

Bepko says "Senator Obama has talked about these unacceptable tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent, that's going to change. We're going to begin to see a fairer tax system that we haven't had for the last eight years and the money's going to come from there."

Republicans say eliminating those tax cuts will not be enough to pay for Obama's program, that taxpayers would end up footing the bill, like welfare and food stamps.

And where will the billions of dollars come from to give Americans that twenty five hundred or five thousand dollar a year tax credit in McCain's plan?

Under the McCain plan, people who get their insurance through their employer, would now be taxed on the money that it cost the employer to pay for that insurance, so the tax paid would be offset by the tax credit.

McCain says more people opting to get health insurance on their own would mean an more open market, and that would mean the cost of healthcare would come down.