Obama’s Healthcare Discrimination: Making Some More Equal than Others

By Selwyn Duke

One thing we get with our
mother’s milk today is revulsion for what civil-rights lawyers call “invidious”
discrimination. For the civil-rights
lawyers who attained their status through the invidious discrimination known as
affirmative action, the parenthesized word means “likely to
create ill will” or “offensively or unfairly discriminating.” Now, the problem with judging invidiousness
is that it requires you know what fairness is.
For instance, it certainly creates ill will when Americans are rejected
simply because they’re too white or too male (yes, it makes sense — think San
Francisco), but the government doesn’t trouble much about that.

We also have an unfair
progressive income tax that evokes ill will in high wage-earners. But although I’m no fan of such taxation, at
least it reflects a moral principle that, when applied privately and justly, is
valid. After all, I think most of us
have at times given someone down on his luck a break.

And this is what Barack Obama’s
healthcare overhaul is supposed to be about, giving those in need a break. Now we learn, though, that the breaks will be
offered, well, most invidiously. In a
sweetheart deal struck behind closed doors — you know, during that transparent
process being covered by No-SeeSpan — unions will receive a special
dispensation from healthcare taxes the rest of us will have to pay. The New
York Post’s Carl Campanile reports on the story, writing:

[The
deal] will save union employees at least $60 billion over the years involved,
while others won't be as lucky — they'll have to cough up almost $90 billion.

The 40
percent excise tax on what have come to be called "Cadillac"
health-care plans would exempt collective-bargaining contracts covering
government employees and other union members until Jan. 1, 2018.

Moreover, Campanile tells us,
“the value of [union] dental and vision plans would be exempt from the tax even
after the deal expires in eight years . . . .”

It gets even more invidious,
though. While the 40 percent tax will be
levied on plans worth $8,900 or more for individuals and $24,000 or more for
families, “The threshold will be even higher for certain plans with many older
workers and women — a move to benefit unions with a high proportion of female
membership . . . .,” wrote Campanile.

Ah, the change of Obama’s
utopia: From each according to his political means, to each according to the
party’s political needs.

Speaking of change, how about
the language manipulation evident in describing a healthcare plan with the name
“Cadillac”? Haven’t we been told that
everyone’s entitled to the best healthcare,
that it’s the most basic of needs? So
why is this right, this need, being cast as a luxury through association with a
high-end car?

Answer: to grease the skids for
tax discrimination against those who obtain something approaching the
healthcare plan Congress enjoys.

Speaking of which, when the
politicians foist Obamascare upon us, they will benefit from discrimination exempting
them from it. So while I don’t know for
how long “Cadillac” health plans will be available, congressmen will still have
their Rolls Royce plan.

And now they’ve deemed a few
more groups more equal than others. Let’s
understand clearly the model they’ve created.
If you’re a non-union auto worker earning $45,000 a year, you’ll be
subject to the 40 percent tax on comprehensive health plans; if you’re a union auto worker earning $45,000 a
year, you won’t be. And even though men
die younger than women and are more likely to suffer work-related injuries, the
fairer sex will get a very unfair break.
My, were I cynical, I’d think that Obamascare has little to do with
fairness and a lot to do with union and feminist lobby clout. But perish the thought. An idea like that could create some ill will.

This is why it’s a pipe dream
to think that the government can or will ever make the world fair. The EEOC investigates discrimination — but
only the kind it deems “invidious.”
Title IX is used to guarantee equality of the sexes in education — except
when the inequality hurts boys.
Hate-crime laws don’t actually outlaw hate — they just give politically
favored groups extra protection. This is
the pattern. So is it surprising that
the government is creating favored groups once again, this time in
healthcare?

And there’s a lesson in this,
one taught well by legendary economist Milton Friedman. Refuting the idea that big government is more
virtuous than the “greedy” free market, he once asked why we
would assume that political self-interest is somehow more noble than economic
self-interest. In reality, I find the
discrimination of the market far more palatable than that of the government. Sure, the market is not perfect; it will
compensate a rap thug with a 500-word vocabulary more handsomely than a person
of substance. Nevertheless, I trust the
judgments of the 300 million people who are market — rendered when making
purchases and pronouncements — more than the judgments of 535 ruling elites,
imposed when making law. Economically
determined discrimination is less scary than politically determined
discrimination.

Besides, at least the market
doesn’t slap us in the face with the pretense of charity, perhaps the scariest
thing of all. As C.S. Lewis once wrote,
“It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral
busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at
some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment
us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

Speaking of conscience, even
before the sweet union deals, the Amish were granted a break from healthcare
mandates. Yet are matters of conscience
only for the irresistibly quaint? So,
now, on top of all the other discrimination, the government will determine
whether your religious beliefs are sincere enough to warrant exemptions from
“your body, Uncle Scam’s choice” legislation.

Really, Obamascare itself, just
like the man it’s named after, is invidious.
Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Diane Crimestein and the rest of their
co-conspirators are invidious. Big
government is invidious. And my will has
become awfully, awfully ill. Let’s just
hope an ill wind of public discontent blows the right kind of discrimination through
the halls of government this November.

This piece first appeared at American Thinker

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