Sally C. Pipes

Sally C. Pipes is President, CEO, and Thomas W. Smith Fellow in Health Care Policy at the Pacific Research Institute, a San Francisco-based think tank founded in 1979. Prior to becoming president of PRI in 1991, she was assistant director of the Fraser Institute, based in Vancouver, Canada.

 

Ms. Pipes addresses national and international audiences on health care. In April 2018, she received an honorary Ph.D from Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy for her work on health care reform. She gave the commencement address at the Convocation. In September 2019, she was invited to participate in an Intelligence Squared debate in New York City. The motion: “Replace Private Insurance with Medicare for All”. She and her partner won the debate. The New York Post invited her to participate in a Sunday symposium on M4A (September 22). C-SPAN covered her Medicare For All Panel at the Heritage Foundation. President Trump posted on Facebook her Weekly Fox News Column (August 11) on why union members should be wary of M4A. She was interviewed by host Mark Levin on Fox News’ “Life, Liberty and Levin” on Medicare for Al. The first showing was seen by 1.5 million viewers and it generated a tremendous number of positive responses from viewers. She has also appeared on ABC’s 20/20; CNN; FOX News”; NBC “Nightly News”; FOX Business Network; “The O’Reilly Factor,” “Your World with Neil Cavuto,” “The Today Show;” “Kudlow & Company on CNBC; MSNBC; “Dateline;” “Politically Incorrect;” “The Dennis Miller Show;” NBC Bay Area’s “Reality Check on Obamacare with Sam Brock”, and other prominent programs. She was featured in the special one-hour FOX documentary, “Live Free or Die in New Hampshire,” that was hosted by Bret Baier.

 

Ms. Pipes writes a bi-weekly health care column for Forbes.com and one for the Washington Examiner’s blog “Beltway Confidential”. She was invited in May 2019 to write a weekly health care column for Fox News. Her health care opinion pieces have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Newsweek, Washington Post, USA Today, Financial Times of London, The Hill, RealClearPolitics, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Sacramento Bee, U.S. News and World Report, the Boston Globe, and the San Diego Union-Tribune, to name a few. Her comments are included regularly in national media outlets from Politico to the Washington Post. Ms. Pipes’ views on health care also appeared in a special report of the world’s 30 leading health care experts published by Forbes.com entitled, “Solutions: Health Care and in Steve Forbes’ latest book How Capitalism Can Save Us. She was widely quoted in Shape Magazine and in the New York Times Sunday Magazine in an article by Princeton’s Peter Singer on how Obama will ration your care.

 

As a health care expert, Ms. Pipes participates in many debates. On September 17, she will participate in an “Intelligence Squared” debate in New York on M4A. She will argue from the con side. She debated two doctors who support single payer health care at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine before 300 medical students. She and Avik Roy, formerly of the Manhattan Institute, debated Jonathan Cohn, former senior editor, The New Republic magazine and now with The Huffington Post and Jonathan Chait, editor, New York Magazine, at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia. She also has debated Nobel laureate Paul Krugman, former Princeton economics professor and New York Times columnist, in New York at Rockefeller University. Also sponsored by Intelligence Squared, the debate was attended by 450 people and was viewed by 270 million around the world through NPR and BBC Worldwide. She has also debated the late Princeton Professor Uwe Reinhardt and Harvard’s Dr. David Himmelstein twice on the “No” side of the motion that “universal health coverage is the responsibility of the federal government.”

 

She served as one of Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s four health care advisors in his bid for the Republican nomination for president in 2008. She was featured in Michael Moore’s movie “Sicko” and has participated in prominent public forums, testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, the House Oversight Committee, the Senate HELP Committee, and in the California, Maine, and Oregon legislatures. She also participates in key radio shows nationwide including “The Dennis Prager Show”, The Larry Elder Show”, “The Lars Larson Show”, and Ed Morrisey’s regular program “Hot Air”. In 2018 she had over 300 health care op-eds published with many being reprinted and retweeted. Follow her on twitter at @sallypipes.

 

In January 2019, Encounter Books will publish her next book False Premise, False Promise: The Disastrous Reality of Medicare for All. The foreword has been written by former Senator Tom Coburn, MD. In March 2018, Encounter published her Broadside The False Promise of Single Payer Health Care. And, in January 2016, Encounter Books released The Way Out of Obamacare. The Cure for Obamacare was released July 17th, 2013 (Encounter Books, Broadside). Eagle Publishing’s Human Events division released her white paper The True Costs of Obamacare, 2014—a special report.

 

The Pipes Plan: The Top Ten Ways to Dismantle and Replace Obamacare was released by Regnery in January 2012. Dr. Arthur Laffer wrote the foreword and endorsements were provided by Steve Forbes, former Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, and Dr. Hal Scherz, head of Docs4Patientcare.

 

The Truth About ObamaCare was published by Regnery Publishing and released August 2010. Following Tom Sowell’s review in his nationally-syndicated column, The Truth About ObamaCare rose to #38 in sales on Amazon.com. He wrote “Fortunately—in fact, very fortunately—you don’t have to slog through 2,400 pages of legislative jargon or turn to a fortune teller to divine the future. The Truth About ObamaCare by Sally Pipes lays it out in the plainest English.”

 

In October 2008, her second book The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care: A Citizen’s Guide with a foreword by Steve Forbes, was published. The release was well timed with the national debate on health care reform. It has been widely reviewed and quoted. Over 1.2 million copies have been downloaded from PRI’s website and 4,500 copies have been sold. Thomas Sowell, also in his syndicated column wrote of the book “Before you do anything else, make a note to read The Top Ten Myths of American Health Care. It might literally save your life.”

 
Her first book, Miracle Cure: How to Solve America’s Health Care Crisis and Why Canada Isn’t the Answer with a foreword by Milton Friedman was released September 28, 2004 and is available on Amazon.com.

 

She was the founder in 2008 of the Benjamin Rush Institute (BRI) and now serves as Chairman of the Board. BRI is a Federalist Society-type organization for medical students across America. There are 20 chapters at medical schools from Harvard to Duke.

 

Ms. Pipes served on the Medical Advisory Council of Genworth Financial’s Long-Term Care Insurance Division and currently serves on the national advisory board of Capital Research Center, the Advisory Board of the California Association of Scholars, and the State Policy Network president’s advisory council, Docs4PatientCare Advisory Board, and The Heartland Institute’s Board of Policy Advisors. She has served as a trustee of St. Luke’s Hospital Foundation in San Francisco, a board member of the Independent Women’s Forum, and as a governor of the Donner Canadian Foundation. She was a member of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s transition team in 2003-04. She serves as chairman of the board of the Benjamin Rush Institute. She is a member, Board of Advisors, Council for Affordable Health Coverage (CAHC).

 

She received the Roe Award at the 2004 annual meeting of State Policy Network. The award is a tribute to an individual in the state public policy movement who has a passion for liberty, a willingness to work for it, and noteworthy achievement in turning dreams into realities. Human Events named her one of the Top 10 Women in the Conservative Movement in America. In 2008, she was honored by the California Women’s Leadership Association. She received the 3rd Annual Women Achievers’ award, “Celebrating the Spirit of Women”. She was also featured in a new book “Women Who Paved the Way” as one of 35 most outstanding women in business in the nation. In August 2009, she was invited by Canada’s Minister of Finance to participate in his “Third Annual Summer Policy Retreat” at Meech Lake in Quebec. The three-day event was attended by a small group of professors, think tank presidents, and small business leaders. The focus was on how to restructure the Canadian health care system.

 

Ms. Pipes, a former Canadian, became an American citizen in 2006. She is married to Professor Charles R. Kesler. She is a member of the Mont Pelerin Society, an international society of economists. While in Canada she was a member of the Canadian Association for Business Economics (president for two terms).