Kathleen Sebelius and Healthcare's Newspeak/reducetheincrease

It's good time to revisit Orwell's 1984 as the Obama presidency begins 'healthcare overhaul'

Many of us have seen Apple's memorable '1984' Super Bowl ad and it resonates because it was probably on some required reading list during our formative years. Now that we have more years under our belts, we have a sense of unease that George Orwell's 1949 classic dystopian novel 1984 is hitting a bit too close to home.

The novel (whose original title page is shown), became famous for its portrayal of pervasive government and control, and government's increasing encroachment on the rights of the individual. Newspeak was the fictional language in 1984.

As the Obama administration begins to take another obligatory whack at 'healthcare reform,' commentators such as Peggy Noonan observe that the deliberate obscurity of official language is intensifying our underlying fear of government.

In the May 16, 2009 WSJ she observes that the language surrounding the healthcare rhetoric of Ms. Sebelius..."accessing affordable quality health care, "single payer plan vis-à-vis private multiparty insurers" and "key component of quality improvement" was little more the "New Class gobbledygook."

This newspeak gobbledygook, which is more prevalent than ever, is also more destructive than ever...because government itself is doing more than ever. There are two major fears among thinking Americans right now, and the deliberate obscurity of official language is only intensifying them.

The first is that Mr. Obama's government, in all its flurry of activism, may kill the goose that laid the golden egg. This is as dreadful and obvious a cliché as they come, but too bad, it's what people fear. They see the spending plans and tax plans, the regulation and reform hunger, the energy proposals and health-care ambitions, and they—we—wonder if the men and women doing all this, working in their separate and discrete areas, are being overseen by anyone.

The second great fear is that the balance between those who pay taxes and those who need benefits will be left, after the great flurry, all out of whack. When this balance is deeply disturbed or distorted, when the number of those who need to take from the system truly overwhelms those who work to provide America's wealth, a tipping point occurs.

Do members of the administration speak obscurely because they can't help themselves, or do they speak the way they speak because they really aren't all that keen to have people understand them?

Wonder what newspeak term Big Brother would have for euro-style socialized medicine?

plusgoodhealthjoy

...now don't we feel better...