And the philosophical differences between the candidates don't end there.
Obama and McCain's proposals reveal starkly different perspectives on how best to provide health insurance in a country where roughly 47 million people - or 17 percent of the population - lack coverage.
"Obama is really working much more toward having universal coverage," said Linda Blumberg, a principal research associate for the Urban Institute's nonpartisan Health Policy Center. "And the coverage issue is really not the dominant one under McCain. It's much more a focus on how we can reduce health-care spending."
McCain's plan would dramatically change how many Americans get health insurance. He proposes ending tax breaks on employer-provided benefits and instead giving a tax credit - $5,000 per family or $2,500 per individual - to people to buy their own coverage.
Obama has slammed the plan, saying during the debate that the new tax credit counted for little since employer benefits would be taxed.
"So what one hand giveth, the other hand taketh away," Obama said.
Experts said that the $5,000 may not cover the cost of a comprehensive plan. And they argue that the proposal would reduce the incentive for employers to offer health insurance, pushing many people into the private sector for benefits.
"If you take the tax subsidy off, a lot of employers are going to decide it's not in their best interest to provide benefits," said Thomas Buchmueller, a health economist at the University of Michigan, who co-authored an analysis of McCain's plan for the journal Health Affairs.
McCain argues that his free market approach will create more competition among insurers and give people more options. But experts said that older people and those with pre-existing conditions could have difficulty getting coverage.
"We estimate that it will be more or less a wash in how many people end up being uninsured," said Buchmueller.
Asked about the criticism that McCain would not have much impact on the number of people with insurance, McCain spokesman Peter Feldman pointed to a recent study by the Minnesota-based HSI Network LLC, which said that McCain's plan would cover half of the currently uninsured.
But that study has raised eyebrows because it differs wildly from other academic analysis - and because one of the HSI researchers helped write the McCain health plan.
McCain's plan would cost about $1.3 trillion over 10 years, according to the non-partisan Tax Policy Center.
McCain's campaign said last week that he would pay for the plan with reductions to Medicare and Medicaid, the government health plans that cover seniors, the poor and the physically challenged.
Here are the details of his plan:
* Offers a tax credit of $2,500 per person and $5,000 per family for insurance.
* Taxes benefits that people get through their employer. So if an employer provides $12,000 in benefits per worker, each worker would pay taxes on that money as income.
* Cuts Medicare and Medicaid to pay for the plan.
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