The Senate Finance Committee’s health-care-overhaul measure would levy a tax on insurance companies offering individual plans costing $8,000 annually and family plans costing $21,000. The threshold for plans subject to the tax would increase each year by the Consumer Price Index, plus 1 percent.

The provision would generate about $200 billion from 2010 to 2019, according to an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan research agency. That money would help expand coverage—a key goal of health-care reform—without breaking the federal budget.

The two national teachers’ unions—the NEA and the 1.4 million-member American Federation of Teachers—have been solidly behind the Democratic-led effort to overhaul the nation’s approach to providing health care, even running ads in swing congressional districts thanking vulnerable Democrats for their support on the issue.

However, per today's Education Week on-line:

...many officials in organized labor, including teacher representatives, argue that a tax imposed on companies would likely be passed along to workers in the form of higher premiums or less comprehensive benefits. That would be unfair, they say, to workers who have given up higher pay in exchange for strong health benefits—a good description of a lot of (the teachers unions') members.

(Note that the tax on "Cadillac" plans language wasn’t part of the health-care-overhaul bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Nov. 7 by a vote of 220-215. The House bill will eventually have to be reconciled with any Senate-passed version.)

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