Sally Pipes Releases New Book: The False Promise of Single-Payer Health Care

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Mar 06, 2018, 08:40 ET

SAN FRANCISCO, March 6, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- As the political drumbeat for single-payer health care rises, PRI's Sally Pipes today released a new book that makes the case against it: The False Promise of Single-Payer Health Care.

"Support for single-payer health care is on the rise -- two-thirds of Democrats and even one-quarter of Republicans favor it in opinion polls," Pipes said. "As I know firsthand from my native Canada, single-payer health care would be a disaster for America. My new book exposes the false promise of single-payer and gives those fighting to preserve market-based health care the facts they need to win the debate."

Pipes offers evidence of single-payer's devastating effects on patients in Canada, the United Kingdom, and even the United States. Her book comes at a time when the political forces pushing single-payer health care are gaining support.

As Will Imbrie-Moore recently wrote in the Harvard Political Review, "Five years ago, a single payer or Medicare for All model in the U.S. was considered a pipe dream by all but the most progressive voters. Today, half of all Americans, almost two-thirds of Democrats, 15 U.S. Democratic Senators, and the majority of Democratic House members support the plan."

The American Action Forum, led by former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, recently argued, "Progressive politicians and advocacy groups have made a single payer health care system a major policy objective for the next two to four years. Those of us who believe that market forces and private innovation lead to the best outcomes should take this effort seriously."

Pipes says her book is part of that effort to educate the American people about the dangers of a government takeover of our healthcare system.

"Now more than ever, Americans must see for themselves what a single-payer healthcare system would mean for them and their families," Pipes said. "My new book shows just what would be in store -- longer wait times between referral from a primary care doctor to treatment by a specialist (21.2 weeks in Canada in 2017), fewer doctors practicing medicine, the best and the brightest students not going into medicine, lower quality of care, less medical innovation, and massive tax increases."

Sally C. Pipes is president, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy at the Pacific Research Institute. One of the nation's most prolific single-payer opponents, Pipes has written and spoken extensively on single-payer. Last year, she debated California Senate President pro Tem Kevin de León -- California's leading single-payer proponent -- at an NPR event in Southern California. She writes bi-weekly columns for Forbes.com, Investor's Business Daily, and for the Washington Examiner's "Beltway Confidential" blog.

The False Promise of Single-Payer Health Care is published by Encounter Books. It is available for purchase at Amazon.com and other book retailers.

The Pacific Research Institute (www.pacificresearch.org) champions freedom, opportunity, and personal responsibility by advancing free-market policy ideas. Follow PRI on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

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SOURCE Pacific Research Institute