Jewelry or Gall Bladders?

I remember when I took Econ 101, in one of the early chapters there was this tradeoff chart that depicted macroeconomic decisions that government had to make during WWII: guns or butter? In other words, in a finite world you could only produce so much guns or butter -- the more guns, the less butter and vice versa.

This sort of reminds me of the dilemma we're facing now and makes me wonder why there's so much resistance to this "millionaires" tax to fund universal health care.

It seems to me if someone is making in the range of a million dollars a year, that 5.4% tax (or whatever it is) on marginal income will definitely not be used for life's necessities. So for lack of a better term, let's say it would be used on a luxury item, like jewelry.

So, put in more basic terms, some of the politicians who are oppossed to the tax on the wealthy are saying they'd rather have their rich constituents buy jewelry than one of their poorer constituents have his or her gall bladder surgery.

What's wrong with this picture?