Nicholas Chopiak – 3/14/08

This page was last updated on March 15, 2008.

Legalized extortion; Nick Chopiak; Beaver County Times; March 14, 2008.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“As president, Hillary Clinton would make health insurance mandatory.

“As in Massachusetts, you would pay a fine if you did not purchase health insurance costing several hundred dollars a month. Your wages could even be garnished.”

[RWC] As a believer in socialized healthcare (See link below.), Mr. Chopiak should know this is how the process works. Whether you’re forced to purchase insurance via premiums or forced to pay healthcare taxes, you have no options when it comes to socialized healthcare systems.

“Her mandated extortion would subsidize the drug and insurance companies and their executives with their $20-million-a-year salaries.

“Last year, $11.3 million was donated by health-care providers to both parties’ candidates. They would love to see mandatory payments.”

[RWC] Mr. Chopiak failed to note Mrs. Clinton’s current plan would allow people to buy into “the same plans available to members of Congress, or you can opt into a public plan option like Medicare.” FYI, I believe this is only the “camel’s nose under the tent.” It’s clear from her 1993 Hillarycare proposal Mrs. Clinton eventually wants healthcare completely controlled by the feds with no involvement by the private sector. Mr. Chopiak should be OK with this approach.

“The failure of bought-and-paid-for politicians to have the courage to change and mandate price control as other countries do on care and drug companies falls on all politicians.”

[RWC] Perhaps Mr. Chopiak can give us an example of wage and price controls that ever worked.

“And with John McCain as president, you will only need life insurance because we are going to war.”

[RWC] You may recall that Mr. Chopiak wrote a letter a month ago complaining that politicians “will not give socialized medicine to you.” Now that Mrs. Clinton wants to bring us socialized healthcare, Mr. Chopiak is upset. All I can figure is, Mr. Chopiak believes there is some kind of socialized healthcare system that’s free.

Finally, kudos to Mr. Chopiak for not using the word “stonewall” in this letter. It breaks a string of at least four letters since September 2006 that used the word.