The Pipes Plan' lays out a 10-step solution
by Neil W. McCabe
01/27/2012
At the Jan. 26 launch party in Washington for her new book, The Pipes Plan, the president of the Pacific Research Institute called on Americans to reject and dismantle the president’s healthcare reform agenda before it is too late.
When then-speaker Nancy Pelosi said Congress had to pass a 2,700-page healthcare reform bill no one had read, so people could find out what was in it, she decided to write a 270-page book that everyone could read to learn how to get rid of it, said Sally C. Pipes, whose book is a 10-step plan to repeal and replace ObamaCare.
There was a personal reason, too, she said. Her first-hand experience dealing with her own mother's illness also compelled her to present a concrete solution to the healthcare problem.
“It is interesting that Obama in his State of the Union address only devoted 44 words to healthcare,” she said.
“I think it’s because the American people don’t like the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” she said.
“Fifty-three percent of Americans want it repealed and as to the individual mandate, 82 percent, according to Gallup, want that repealed.”
Pipes said the American people have been fooled by the claims by President Barack H. Obama Jr., especially the claims that reforms will bend the cost curve downward and that his program will achieve universal coverage.
“Under the plan, still 23 million Americans will be uninsured by 2019,” she said.
Joining Pipes at the event was Virginia Atty. Gen. Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, was one of the leading opponents of president’s healthcare reform, who made his own remarks before Pipes.
“I am a specialist at dismantling ObamaCare, so, it is good to have other people who have thought through replacing it,” said Cuccinelli, a member of the group of more than 20 state’s attorneys general suing the federal government in order to have the entire law revoked.
“After we beat this thing in court,” he said. “I think it will be the only time that anyone has eliminated an entitlement—it will be kinda sad that the only time way we’ve ever done it is by court action, but we will take what we can get.”
The next day, those who fought to end the healthcare reform will have the obligation to present an alternative plan, he said.
“Our side, the limited government side, will be face with a different kind of battle from that moment,” he said.
“This president will go on the attack and we will be blamed for any person who passes away for any reason—including 100-plus-year-olds,” he said.
“Be ready for it, it is all they do,” he said.
“Campaigns are sales marketing and communications, and this president is outstanding at those things,” Old Dominion’s attorney general said. “Governing is a lot more—which he has found, and we have suffered.”
Cuccinelli said one of the great obstacles to getting rid of the healthcare law passed in 2010 is that so many people will benefit from its funding and regulatory regime.
By picking out winners, there is now an entrenched and enriched group of people who will fight to save and expand their gold mine, he said.
Pipes, who was raised in Canada, said in her own discussions with that country's Prime Minister Stephen J. Harper, she was surprised when he told her there was no way politically he could dismantle Canada's government-controlled head-on.
Harper told her the forces supporting the status quo were too powerful, she said.
When her own mother took ill, Pipes said it forced her to deal with the Canadian system, which was a wake-up call to her about what was coming to America before the winners from ObamaCare became too powerful.
“What the American people don’t realize is the in Canada, the government is the sole provider of healthcare,” she said. Private providers are prohibited by law there.
“But, they have an escape because Canadians can come to the United States and pay out-of-pocket,” she said.
In a well-publicized case, the Newfoundland premier was criticized in the Canadian press when he went to Miami for cardiac treatment, she said.
“When he got back, he said: ‘It’s my heart. It’s my health. It’s my choice,’” she said.
“My own mother died in December of ’05 of colon cancer,” she said.
The previous June, she convinced her mother to see a doctor about getting a colonoscopy, which is detailed examination with a very small camera or through a fiber optic cable, Pipes said.
“Her doctor said: ‘You know, at your age we cannot get you a colonoscopy —we have people in their 50s waiting six months,’” she said.
“By November of ’05, my mother had lost 30 pounds and called me to tell me she was hemorrhaging,” she said.
“We got her into an ambulance and to the hospital,” she said. “She spent two days in the emergency room, two days in the transition lounge waiting for a bed, she finally she got her colonoscopy, then my mom died two weeks later from metastasized colon cancer.”
Pipes said, “This is what happens with the government global budget and says who get what.”
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