August 5, 2018
As healthcare premiums go up, Obamacare has
become increasingly unpopular with the American public as more people lose
their coverage, health plan, and their doctors. While Conservatives have
offered free-market solutions to these issues, socialist candidates like Bernie
Sanders have offered legislation that would introduce a government-run
single-payer system that would bankrupt the country.
Sally Pipes is the president and CEO of the San
Franciso-based Pacific Research Institute, a "Forbes" columnist, and healthcare
policy expert who has written numerous books on the topic. Her latest book, "The False Promise of
Single-Payer Health Care" debunks the Left's idea of the federal
government running the medical industry.
The following is an interview with Mrs. Pipes on
the single-payer system, Canada's version of it, and the disaster that the
federal government often brings to the medical industry.
Q: You recently wrote an article in Forbes about California’s
healthcare system’s role in the tremendous, unattainable budget of two-hundred
billion dollar budget for the state. What are some suggestions you have on
fixing the Golden State’s healthcare system and making it more manageable?
Sally Pipes: Two-hundred billion dollars is a
lot of money. It was Governor Jerry Brown’s very last budget and it keeps going
up and up as more government programs are becoming entitlement programs in the
state of California.
It looks like Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom will
become the new governor and he is big supporter of single-payer healthcare or
“medicare for all,” not allowing any private insurance at all, making
everything under a government plan.
In June 2017, the state senate passed SB-562, a
single-payer bill, which have cost, according to the senate appropriations
committee, four hundred billion dollars a year, double the size of the
California budget. Fortunately the bill was parked by the legislature’s
Democrat speaker of the house, who said it did not say how much the bill would
cost or how it would be paid for.
The last thing we want in California is a
single-payer healthcare system which is even more comprehensive than the one in
Canada.
Q: On the Canada note, its healthcare system has
a lot of proponents in the United States who want to duplicate their programs
for us. Could you briefly touch on Canada’s system and whether or not it would
work in the US?
Sally Pipes: I am Canadian, I grew up under the
single-payer healthcare system. Canada is only one of eleven developed
countries that does not allow for any private insurance for something that is
medically necessary.
I previously worked at an institute where we
started a publication called "Wait Your Turn: A Guide To Waiting Lists In
Canada."
In 2017, the average wait time to see a primary
care doctor or treatment by a specialist in Canada was 22.1 weeks, over five
months. Over one million Canadians are on that list, trying to get a doctor.
Just last week, the Fraser Institute released the cost of this “free” system.
It turns out that nothing is free. An average Canadian family of four pays,
through hidden taxes and fees, around thirteen thousand dollars for long
waiting lists, rationed care, and light access to the latest treatment.
Also, there’s a shortage of doctors and hospital
beds in Canada because doctors’ salaries are tied to what each provincial
government is willing to pay for a procedure. Of course, a lot of doctors quit
medicine and retired early.
This is a system we do not want in the United
States, but Senator Bernie Sanders has been pushing this very hard with his
“medicare for all” bills since he was running against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic
Party presidential nomination in 2016.
He never says what this would cost, but the
Urban Institute, which is Left-wing, said $32 trillion over ten years.
Q: That’s trillion with ‘T'?
Sally Pipes: Trillion with a "T." This
would mean that the United States would have the same problems as Canada.
Rationed care, long waits, much higher taxes. That includes income taxes,
corporate taxes, payroll taxes, and even if you doubled all of those taxes, it
would not cover the cost of this of this single-payer system.
Q: President Obama tried to initiate a universal
healthcare-light, known as Obamacare, and one of your accomplishments is your
commentary on Obamacare. In 2016, you wrote the book "The Way out of
Obamacare" where you lay out a plan to get out of that system. Do you
believe that President Trump’s attempt to stall Obamacare through executive
order helped or hurt the process of repealing it? Or could the current
administration do more?
Sally Pipes: Obamacare became the law of the
land on March 23, 2010, so it’s eight-and-a-half years old. It has not worked
for the American people. High premiums, high deductibles, narrow networks of
doctors and hospitals, and only 12 million people covered in a country of over
330 million, so it has not worked.
President Trump, when he was running for
president, along with GOP candidates for the House and Senate, were running on
a repeal and replace measure for Obamacare.
Unfortunately, by the fall of 2017, they were
unable to achieve that. President Trump, in October, announced a plan to extend
shor- term plans from three months to twelve months. The executive branch even
made it so you could extend it to thirty-six months if you wanted.
Now these plans are not for everyone and
(Democrat Senate Minority Leader) Chuck Schumer is trying to say they are junk
plans. They are not, they are giving people who don’t have employer-based
coverage an option. I’m a big fan of this new rule.
Q: Are you for a straight repeal, repeal and
replace, and if so, what would you replace it with?
Sally Pipes: I’ve been a huge fan of
"repeal and replace." When (former Health and Human Services
Secretary) Tom Price was in the House with Speaker Paul Ryan, we were all on
the same page on a replace agenda. I would like to see it fully repealed and then
replaced with a plan that empowers patients and doctors, not the federal
government.
The plan I would like to see would change the
tax code to allow those with private insurance to get the [same] tax benefits
as those with employer-based coverage. People who are insured through their
employer get their coverage tax free, but if you go into the individual market
you have to pay for it with tax dollars.
That would be a huge thing in leveling the
playing field. I would like to see states reduce their mandates on healthcare.
I would like to see medical malpractice reform. Doctors do practice defensive
medicine because they are afraid of being sued. I’d like to see people be able
to buy insurance from across state lines. I’d like to see Medicare made better
by increasing the age limit from 65 because the average American lives to 79. I
would like to see changes to Medicaid.
There’s a lot of things that can be done.
The last thing is, when you hear people on the
Left saying that Republicans want to go back to hurt people with pre-existing
conditions, there are only about six million people in the market who have
chronic or pre-existing conditions. The solution to help those people is to
allow the states to set-up high-risk pools with funds from the federal government
so that those people could get coverage and not make younger, healthier people
pay for those costs. High-risk pools are a great way to deal with people who
have these pre-existing conditions.
Q: One last question: Your latest book,
"The False Promise Of Single-Payer Healthcare," will be released in
March. Tell us what it is about and what you hope your readers will take away
from it.
Sally Pipes: As America has become enthralled
with the idea of a single-payer, Medicare for all system, with people like
Bernie Sanders and the new darling of the Left Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the
polls show that 51% of Americans and 75% of Democrats favor that kind of
system. My book explains exactly what single-payer is and gives examples of it
in Canada and the U.K. Long wait periods, people dying in the hospitals, and it
even talks about the Veterans Administration which is a true single-payer
system. It discusses how harmful it has been to the vets, and how they need
privatization so our vets can have the best care.
This is what I talk about so I can educate
Americans on this crazy idea about full government takeover of our healthcare
system.
To find out more about Sally Pipes' books on
healthcare policy, you can visit her Amazon page.
https://www.dailywire.com/news/34061/exclusive-sally-pipes-why-single-payer-healthcare-jacob-airey?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_content=062316-news&utm_campaign=benshapiro
No comments:
Post a Comment