OR: John McCain's Health Care plan will make "you" pay tax on medical insurance. Workers threatened with arrest by McCain camp

Hey American worker, John McCain would rather see you arrested than speak to you.

Recent related story:John McCain's Health care plan, printable poster, spread the facts

More than 50 times American workers have been at fund raisers to confront John McCain on his anti-worker voting record and outrageous Health Care proposal, this past Monday is the first time the workers had an adjacent room just a few steps away, "making it possible for John McCain to walk only a few steps to meet with working folks."

John McCain's Health Care plan will make "you" pay tax on medical insurance

McCain’s health care proposals(PDF file), which are similar to President Bush’s failed policies, would tax employer-provided health care as income, increase costs to workers, leave workers at the mercy of insurance companies who could weed out people who need health care the most, make health care harder to obtain and lower the quality of available health care plans.'

Well heres the scoop on what happened when members of the Oregon State AFL-CIO tried to speak with McCain.

From the Oregon State AFL-CIO (5/15/08):

McCain Refuses to Meet with Oregon's Working and Women Monday Evening
Instead, Presidential hopeful spends evening with donors who can pay more for dinner than many working folks earn in a year

Oregon’s working men and women waited…and waited…and waited just steps away from Presidential hopeful Senator John McCain’s $33,100 per couple fundraiser Monday evening to tell their stories of health care crisis and struggle to the presumptive Republican nominee. But McCain never showed.

In fact, when Oregon AFL-CIO President Tom Chamberlain offered to approach his campaign team with one last polite, in-person request to see him Chamberlain was threatened with arrest.

“Senator McCain had an unprecedented opportunity today to show that he is as concerned about working folks as he is about his wealthy friends,” said Oregon AFL-CIO President Tom Chamberlain. “Instead he reaffirmed that he doesn’t share the priorities of working folks and he is not the candidate to turn around America.”

The event was attended by more than 20 working men and women and their children. One Oregonian who hoped to share her story with McCain was Nancy Cochran: “For someone who claims to be a straight talker, I feel like we got the run around,” said Cochran. “With his plan, we’re basically on our own. It feels like we’ve been forgotten. He wants us out of sight and out of mind.”

Cochran, a 51-year-old wife, mother and employee, says her family can’t even afford to use its employer provided health care because they can’t afford the twenty percent of medical care that that the insurance doesn’t pay.

Brandy Benedict, an emergency room nurse who also attended the event knows Cochran’s situation all too well.

I see people every day who work fulltime, work two jobs, who don’t have insurance, and even if they have insurance they can’t afford health care or prescriptions because their premiums and out-of-pocket costs are too high,” Benedict said. “Health insurance is expensive, and it is a luxury that is already out of reach for many individuals and families. Further shifting the cost burden from employers to workers, as the McCain health care proposal outlines, will increase the number of uninsured patients I see. There is a solution to our health care problems, but we will not find it in McCain’s plan.” (continued at site)

Do you want to pay tax on your medical insurance?