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By Lee Duigon
August 30, 2012
NewsWithViews.com

Already famous for its “Chicago values” of murder, sodomy, and corruption, the city of Chicago has now given us a glimpse of the not-so-distant future of Obamacare in America.

Starting very soon, city employees will either have to sign up for the Chicago Lives Healthy “wellness program” or else—there’s always an “or else” in Chicago—pay an extra $50 a month for their health care plan (see “Chicago Pushing ‘Wellness Program on Its Employees” by Susan Jones, CNSNews.com, Aug. 24 ). “Our program will change lives,” gloated Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who expressed delight that some 22,000 have signed up so far—rather than toss an extra $50 a month into the garbage disposal. This is what Democrats usually mean by “choice.”

While few would object to being given assorted “free” health screenings—“free” means they aren’t telling you what it will cost the city’s taxpayers—there comes a point at which everyone in the program will have to take part in a “Wellness Assessment.” This is supposedly “a confidential questionnaire that assesses life and environmental factors that are critical to your health, well-being and your ability to improve both.” You’ll have to answer 60 questions intended “to get a better sense of factors that can’t be tested,” including the unsuspecting individual’s health history, mental health, stress, and “barriers to change.”

Let’s take a machete to this verbal jungle to see what’s hiding in it.

If you really are OK with a bunch of Chicago bureaucrats assessing your mental health, then nobody needs to assess it. You’re crazy.

Stress? How about the stress of having the Western world’s most corrupt political machine deciding what you have to do to be healthy—as they define healthy? If you’re already a stress eater, you’ll really blimp up after a few months of this.

What do you suppose they mean by “barriers to change”? That could mean just about anything, couldn’t it? “You ate at Chick-fil-A the other day. You didn’t contribute any money to the president’s re-election campaign. You have a picture of Sara Palin in your desk drawer. You’ve logged on to News With Views. All of these are barriers to change. Plus you smoke and drink and eat red meat and Twinkies! But don’t worry—we’re here to help you change.”

You’re going to have to go through all this to keep your job. They will assign to you “wellness activities,” whatever those turn out to be, “which must be performed every month.” They’ll check on you to make sure. These activities will be designed to help you reach your “wellness goals” as defined by Rahm Emanuel and his merry men.

Now are you getting just a little bit uneasy about this?

But here’s the punch line—today Chicago, tomorrow the entire country. Now that the government has made itself responsible for your health care, they will demand that you stay health. Or else.

So…

Get up off that couch! Get out from behind the wheel of that car! Turn off that TV and go to bed! What, you’re still in bed? Wake up! Give us twenty push-ups, twenty sit-ups, twenty jumping-jacks! And what’s this we hear about you not eating your tofu-burgers? You’ll burn off those calories, pal, or we’ll burn ‘em off for you!

We also have grave concerns about your mental health. A neighbor overheard you praying! You were actually seen not attending the Gay Pride Parade! We have you on tape making rude noises during the president’s televised speech the other night—which you were late in tuning in to, by the way. These are all signs of acute mental non-wellness!

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Does anybody really, truly want to live this way?

Can anyone even imagine the cost of micromanaging the lives of everybody in America? The surveillance, the paperwork, the sheer magnitude of the administrative details?

People become liberals because they think God’s laws are too harsh and too demanding. They’re like kids who run away from home because their parents tell them to stop playing video games and clean their rooms, who wind up in the hands of pimps and cults and gurus who demand of them a helluva lot more than their parents ever did.

Will they still call this country America when it isn’t America anymore?