Via the L. A. Times, the Obama administration clarifies its position on "health care reform" by weighing in:

President Obama told top Democratic House members on Wednesday that he favored a tax on insurance companies offering more-expensive healthcare plans as a means of extending insurance to millions of people who are not covered...
...

The so-called "Cadillac tax" is a feature of a health care bill that cleared the Senate before the Christmas holiday. But the House has chosen another financing method — a tax hike on the wealthy.

The key seems to be this: to provide for the General Welfare of the people, it is important to strike a balance in insurance options for the peons public. There is such a thing, you see, as having too much healthcare coverage, just as there is such a thing as having too little. The surest course to general contentment, goes the reasoning, is to make some options less desirable. That way (I guess), everyone picks the one or two options the government is prepared to support. It makes things less confusing.

Call it the "Fast Food Menu" approach to governance. So long as you stick with the numbered Meal Plans, you can get by fairly easily.

And, of course, the political Powers That Be just know that there will be no "downstream" effects of placing the burden of insuring the nation's uninsured on the backs of private industry or the wealthy.

Meanwhile, CA Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger again demonstrated his politically fatal tendency toward moderation by gigging the federal legislators:

Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger... used his state of the state speech to deride the bill as "health care to nowhere."

Schwarzenegger said, "Now as you know, while I enthusiastically supported health care reform, it is not reform to push more costs onto states that are already struggling while other states are getting sweetheart deals. Health care reform, which started as noble and needed legislation, has become a trough of bribes, deals and loopholes."

Senator Diane Feinstein, (D), issued the compulsory wrist-slap on behalf of the Democrats.