Buried at the end of The Hill’s story on Dem infighting over health care is this interesting bit:

The Senate-passed bill would increase the Medicare payroll tax on high-income earners. The final measure could further increase that tax or even apply it to non-wage income, such as investment earnings, for the first time.

On the one hand, you could make the case for this by arguing that seniors — many of whom derive much of their current income from investments — should pay more in taxes for Medicare, since they benefit most from the program. On the other hand, that represents a massive tax hike on investors at a time when the stock-market rally is the only bright spot on the economic horizon. Either way, I can’t imagine this would do much for Obama’s popularity on this issue (a reasonable metric for judging the popularity of the proposals that have made it to this stage of the process). As Dan Foster notes, Obama’s popularity on health care is plummeting in the polls. The drop in the Quinnipiac poll is especially noteworthy — disapproval has steadily increased from 42 to 58 percent since last summer. Meanwhile, the percentage of respondents answering “don’t know” has fallen from 13 to 6 percent. The longer this legislation lies out in the sun to rot, and the more people learn about it, the less they like it.

Charlie Rangel says Congress won’t be able to deliver a final bill before February. That’s great news for opponents of this legislation.