Lawmakers are looking at a levy on top-tier medical coverage to help finance healthcare reform. A proposal circulated over the weekend by Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, would pay for the reform by taxing insurance companies on the most expensive policies they offer, said the Los Angeles Times. Although no exact policy price threshold has been established, supporters estimate such a tax could raise as much as $180 billion over 10 years. Originally championed by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who introduced the proposal over the summer, the tax would also help curb healthcare costs, supporters say, because insurers would be under pressure to reduce costs and premiums on their most expensive policies to avoid the levy. Proponents say the move would iron out a wrinkle in the tax code viewed as unfair to lower wage workers and the uninsured. “We’re interested in discipline within healthcare,” said Sen.Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) after the proposal emerged. Despite some criticism, the tax proposal has bipartisan support in the Senate. But the plan could face opposition from an unlikely alliance of labor unions, insurers and business leaders concerned that the government would have to go far deeper than the executive suite to raise enough money to cover the costs of a sweeping reform, said the report. Unions instead supports a House-sponsored proposal to boost income taxes on people earning more than $250,000 to help fund coverage for the 47 million Americans who lack insurance. It’s impossible to know how much U.S. companies spend on blue-chip plans because they generally are not required to disclose this information. Meanwhile, a recent article in the New England Journal of Medicine criticized executive physicals as “almost a parody of the high-cost, low-return procedures that prudent companies rightly want clinicians to eliminate for other employees.”