Let the healthcare dispute begin.

Last month President Obama announced that religious organizations would have to provide employees with health insurance policies that cover contraception at no charge. The decree falls under the Department of Health and Human Services’ powers, thanks to the president’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – otherwise known as Obamacare.

Because many of the affected groups morally oppose birth control, the decision drew fierce criticism from the religious community. Priests, rabbis and others across the country have rightly argued that being required to fund contraception violates their freedom of conscience.

In response to the outrage, President Obama devised an “accommodation.” According to the new plan, religious organizations are no longer required to provide their employees with contraception coverage.

Instead, the burden has been shifted to the organizations’ insurance companies, whose plans must now cover contraception for free.

Although the switch seems to have bought the president some political cover, it does nothing to change the moral dilemma at hand. Religious groups are still forced to deal with insurance companies that cover birth control.

Furthermore, while the employers are technically no longer paying for their employees’ birth control, insurance companies will pass along the costs indirectly.

Putting aside the fact the president’s alleged concession solves nothing, the debate this issue has sparked continues to overlook some vital points.

Nearly every participant in this dispute has taken one of two sides: women’s rights or religious freedom.

To be clear, this issue threatens a woman’s right to contraception in no way whatsoever. Women are and will remain perfectly free to use their preferred method of birth control. The question is who will pay for it.

This is where the real rights violations arise. Under the Affordable Care Act, private parties are legally required to provide certain services for others. In this case, faith-based employers must subsidize their employees’ use of birth control. This particular case clearly violates the employers’ religious rights, but the underlying principle extends much further.

The idea that the federal government can legitimately force citizen A to serve citizen B in any capacity flies in the face of individual liberty. Suppose Congress passed a law requiring you to wash my car for free every other Saturday.

Failure to do so would get you a heavy fine. Wouldn’t you object to such a law?

Strip away the moralistic rhetoric about protecting consumers, and healthcare mandates are no different than car-washing mandates. Both unjustly compel one party to supply another with goods or services against their will. As conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer aptly puts it, this is “government by presidential fiat.”

Just as important, these executive decrees violate the long-standing American ideal of human equality. Legally forcing one group of Americans to serve another, for whatever reason, subordinates the former group to the latter.

It grants favored classes certain entitlements that others must sacrifice time and money to provide. Such a system must be seen as the morally repulsive scheme that it is.

Unfortunately, these broader issues have largely been lost in the debate over contraception coverage. Both sides claim to support individual rights, whether it’s the right to birth control or the right to religious freedom.

Despite each side’s passion, this firestorm isn’t about contraception. It’s about individual liberty versus federal coercion.

Catholic groups can’t be legitimately forced to pay for their workers’ contraception anymore than you can legitimately be forced to wash my car – religious beliefs have nothing to do with it.

We as autonomous individuals have an unalienable right to live our lives as we see fit, provided we don’t harm others in doing so. Healthcare mandates trample that right.

This isn’t the first controversy to develop over the monolithic Affordable Care Act, and it certainly won’t be the last.

As these debates unfold, Americans must stop tinkering around the law’s edges and begin questioning its underlying assumption that Washington can justly force citizens to provide and purchase certain services from one another.

This discussion is long overdue and will hopefully encourage people to think a little harder about the proper role of government in society.