One of the dirtbag portions of the Health Care Takeover Bill

is the 'Cadillac tax' on, to put it plainly, 'insurance plans we think cost too much or benefit the holder too much'; with that decision, of course, being made by a bunch of corrupt politicians desperate to A: get more of our money and B: control our health care. Looking over at Megan McArdle's blog(I think she's a moron to want carbon taxes and that other crap, but that's another post) she has this post on these planned taxes. Among the things she points out.
The levy has been dubbed the Cadillac tax," but research shows it would likely affect a broad swath of Americans regardless of their income, which could indeed amount to the tax on the middle-class that President Obama promised would not happen under his administration. The tax is a growing source of anxiety for Huber and his co-workers, but also for Democrats in the House, who vow to strip the measure out of the bill in conference or consider bringing the bill down altogether.
'Amount to'? It IS one of the increased taxes- or in this case added taxes- Obama promised he would not enact. Which a lot of people said he was lying about when he made said promise(nice to be right, but-). But back to the point.

At the time, Obama said he did not want the tax to hit middle-class families, but when the proposal emerged from the Senate Finance Committee in September, it proposed charging insurance companies and a 40 percent excise tax for high-dollar, but not exactly gold-plated plans. The bill now calls for the tax to apply to plans exceeding $8,500 for individuals and $23,000 for families, for the cost of combining health savings accounts, medical, prescription drugs, dental, vision, etc.. The tax is charged to insurance companies, but it is widely assumed they would passed it on to employers.
They will, because they don't have a choice; they can't simply swallow that. Oh, and for anyone who says "They make too much money, force them to eat it!", well, not only do their profits go down- a LOT- but every pension plan out there that has money invested in those companies, which means every man and woman in that plan, loses(You want to be the one informing those people "Your pension just lost 'X' in value because of the increased government taxes on the companies you're invested in" ? And just how do you think they'll react? Which is a different post).

And if they're not allowed to pass that cost on? They'll probably cut the plans for the next year, or do something else that reduces the benefits and/or ups the costs.

This next paragraph contains something that just pisses me off no end:
Despite the politically powerful unions that oppose it, the tax is enormously attractive to government economists because it both raises revenue -- $149 billion over ten years -- and should depress the rate of health care inflation by discouraging companies from offering more generous health plans. The Joint Committee on Taxation and the CBO credit the tax as the largest factor in "bending the cost curve" and cutting the federal deficit, as the Senate bill is expected to do.
Just what the HELL business is it of these bastards what insurance plan I'm offered at the place I work? Who the FUCK are they to say "This is too good a plan, so we're going to tax it" ? This is nothing but a means of forcing companies to either cut to crappy plans people will want out of or to force companies to drop it altogether, forcing people onto the socialized medicine plan.

If the place where I work considers its employees valuable enough to offer a really good health plan and is profitable enough to afford such, IT IS NONE OF OBAMA'S BUSINESS, it is none of Pelosi or Reid's business. Hell, they ought to be happy, IF their actual concern is simply the health of those people. But this tends to prove that that's not their real concern; their real concern is government control of all health care and to hell with the people it screws. This is nothing but a way to, again, steal more money from people under color of law and to FORCE people onto a government-run health care scheme.

Christina Romer, a senior economic adviser to the president, predicted in October that the tax would encourage, "both employers and employees to be more watchful health care consumers." But research released last week by Mercer, an employee benefits consulting firm, showed that in addition to considering lower cost plans, two-thirds of companies polled said they would also raise health care costs for workers through higher co-pays and deductibles, regardless of whether the employee is a CEO or a line worker at a factory.
You man that line worker that Obama promised would face no tax increases under his benevolent rule? Who now gets to 'choose' a crappier health plan because the God-damned politicians and bureaucrats want more of his money? Gee, that's a winning idea, isn't it?