It's easy to grasp the political appeal of making the nation's medical industry pony up for health care reform.

Taxing insurers, hospitals, drug companies, laboratories and medical device makers is much more palatable to politicians than hitting up individuals to help cover the cost of the nearly $900 billion overhaul. And to be blunt, the health care industry made itself a tempting target. Years of executives living large as millions of Americans went without health insurance or were forced by medical bills into bankruptcy cast corporations as villains in this summer's heated health care debate.

So it came as no surprise this week that the influential Senate Finance Committee bill relied on the populist, deceptive strategy of raising billions from new medical industry sales taxes to fund its legislative prescription for reform. While some parts of the industry cut deals in advance on this, others such as medical device makers, did not. They would face $40 billion in new taxes over the next 10 years. Manufacturers from Medtronic to Boston Scientific have mobilized to fight the tax, enlisting most of Minnesota's congressional delegation and Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

Many might be tempted to say: Good, let the rich corporations pay. That's a view both naive and shortsighted. The reality is that an industry tax is largely passed along to those who buy its products. Higher costs mean higher prices for consumers. There's no reason to expect any differently with the Baucus plan. In fact, one of the medical device industry's main arguments against the $40 billion assessment is that it's less able to pass along this new costs than insurers or drug companies.

"Congress does not have the cojones to look people in the eye and raise taxes to pay for reform," said well-known Washington, D.C.-based health care consultant Robert Laszewski. "All it's doing is turning these [companies] into a division of the IRS."

This hidden tax would be regressive, further shielding consumers from understanding the true cost of their care. There's also a risk it could exacerbate one of the problems health care reform is supposed to address: soaring health care costs. All this would do is tack more costs onto an already expensive system.

The Senate bill, likely the blueprint for any reform passed this year, needs to go further in wringing savings from the system through payment reform -- rewarding quality care vs. quantity of care. Ideally, it would also rely more heavily on more honest and fair approaches to raising revenue for reform. An idea deserving a high-profile discussion: taxing employees' health benefits. That would spread the cost out among the greatest number of people and be less economically disruptive than a new industry sales tax.

The medical device industry is already warning that a new tax on it would cut into research and development funds, stifling innovation and jeopardizing jobs. The industry shouldn't expect any special exemption from Congress, but at the same time, companies make a strong case that they are being asked to pay a disproportional amount.

Taxing employees' health benefits, advocated by Republican John McCain in the last presidential election, remains a tough sell. The new health care industry tax is likely here to stay -- yet another disappointing reminder that political expediency does not make for good policy.