2084

Health and Human Servitude

Anyone who has lazily flipped through the news channels, spotted the never-touched newspaper racks in the grocery store, or skimmed through articles and clips of current events online has been overwhelmed by the bile surrounding the mandate from the Department of Health and Human Services.  The right decries it as an attack on religious liberty, the destruction of the line between Church and State.  The left hails it at evidence of a war on women and of the cruelty of Obamacare opponents.

                The simple misconception occurs because the divide seeps much deeper into the conflicting rationales.  The issue at stake is not religious liberty, and not the respect of women.  It is not freedom of conscience, or the aid of federal healthcare.  The issue is the heart and soul of the United States, the very essence of the American Revolution.

                The infringement that the HHS Mandate makes upon America is that it requires businesses to offer a certain kind of health coverage.  It doesn’t matter what it requires to be covered, only that it is dictating to businesses how they are to be run.  The United States was built upon the ideal of individual liberty- the simple idea that people have the best shot at happiness if their ability to make their own choices is not infringed upon by others.  To say that a business should be forced to give certain benefits to its employees removes the choices of the employer and the employee from the equation- the first because his benefits are dictated, the second because he cannot choose an employer with the particular benefits he wants: all are now the same, regardless of what’s best for him.

               The spotlight granted to HHS illuminates a dark humor that could have come from the pages of a dystopian fiction.  Any great author portraying the dangers of certain political philosophies begins at the same place; he begins with the names.

                Names and language are the tools we use to perceive the world.  They are the connection between our minds and reality.  Is it any wonder, therefore, that Orwell, Bradbury, Lewis, Huxley, and More all put such emphasis on the names of the people and places they created?  From the tale of Utopia(No-place) brought by Raphael Hythlodaeus (Nonsense Messenger) to the Newspeak and Doublethink crated by the Ministries of Love, Peace, Plenty and Truth, names have served as translated insults and veiled sarcasm.  Even Lewis’ villain –the National Institute of Co-ordinated Experiments- has named itself N.I.C.E.  (Ironically enough, there is today a facet of the British Government that calls itself NICE- the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence drops the ‘H’ so that their name sounds friendlier to those patients who they deny medicines that could save them.)

                A similar brush was taken to the Department of Health and Human Services, making it sound –to all those Americans who hear the name once a year or two- like the warm and happy place the name suggests, full of bright, smiling doctors.

                When next you are told that the HHS Mandate is attacking religion or that its opponents are oppressing women, remember that it isn’t a battle between Church and State or Men and Women.  It is a struggle between Liberty and Legislators.