Amongst the weedy proposals to pay for Obamacare waits a potentially nasty tax snake, ready to bite everyone and anyone remotely involved.
It's a 40% excise tax on any premium whose annual value exceeds $8,500 - $23,000 for families.
It's a premium tax, they say, on "premium" health insurance plans.
The "Cadillac" health care tax.
The government, of course, says, don't worry - that 40% tab's going to be picked up by the insurance companies.
So what is a premium tax? It's a tax on insurers for the privilege of providing insurance to anyone in the US, the equivalent of your or my income tax.
Most states already have a premium tax in place, but those The insurance companies, for their part, are fighting the premium tax every step of the way.
One can presume, should it pass, that they intend on following through with their warnings (threats, really) that the 40% tax would be passed along to their customers.
One might also assume that the cost would be passed along to all their customers under a false pretense - that premium taxes affects all health insurance premiums, not just the "Cadillac" premiums - or, just as likely: they raise costs across the board to minimize the perception that the expensive premiums are, well, more expensive.
Those assumptions are, according to some economists, fairly wrong.
As the insurance companies raise prices on premiums, so, too, do the amounts incurred from the 40% health insurance premium tax.
The more they raise prices, the more they have to give back to the government.
So how will the the health insurance premium tax change the insurance market? It looks like the experts are suggesting that the tax would drive most Americans to stay under the $8,500 ceiling.
Also, they say, more health care isn't necessarily a good thing.
Capping the health insurance premium taxes at a reasonable level gives incentives to the insured and the providers to seek more cost-effective health solutions, thereby slowing the roll of the snowballing health care costs.