Labor, Health Care Activists Protest Health Insurance Lobby Plots to Kill Reform

More than 500 union members and health care activists packed the sidewalks in front of and across the street from the meeting of the giant health insurance lobby group, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) in Washington, D.C., October 22 in support of health care reform.

AHIP’s top honchos, who met at the Capitol Hilton to plot their assault against health care reform, refused to meet with any of the seven families who traveled to DC to tell how they were denied needed health care despite having insurance coverage.

Before marching to the Hilton, hundreds gathered at the AFL-CIO building, where AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka laid out the principles that must underlie any health care reform: a real public option to decrease costs for families and create competition, employer responsibility so companies like Wal-Mart are held accountable, and no new taxes on workers’ benefits.

“Health care reform isn’t to make insurance companies happy, it’s to make the American people healthy! Today we are going to make sure that they hear loud and clear what this fight is about,” Trumka said. “It’s about the families who’ve suffered so much—not about the big insurance companies’ bottom line.

“They think it’s OK to make more money by calling everything under the sun a pre-existing condition and denying people coverage. We’re here to say it’s not OK. They think it’s OK to make more money by controlling 94 percent of the markets and not giving people any choices. We’re here to say it’s not OK. They think it’s OK to keep making more money by blocking health care reform. We’re here to say it’s not OK. We’re going to let insurers—and our senators—know that we have no time to wait,” Trumka said. “We need health care reform now.”

While health insurance companies, drug companies and their front groups have been breaking records in their fight to keep control over our health care, spending millions this summer on TV and lobbying in D.C., labor and health care reform activists have organized to fight for real health care reform.
Supporters of health care reform made more than 300,000 calls to Congress on a national call-in day in October, including to California Senator Dianne Feinstein.

Union members and health care activists rallied inside the offices of Anthem Blue Cross/WellPoint in San Francisco October 6. Photos by Paul Burton

In San Francisco, union members and health care activists marched to the offices of Anthem Blue Cross/WellPoint October 6 to serve an arrest warrant for the company’s CEO Angela Braly for earning excessive pay while denying care to people with pre-existing conditions, canceling policies, and opposing health care reform.

The protest followed similar actions in September organized by Health Care for America Now (HCAN) with MoveOn.org, the California Labor Federation, Service Employees International Union, ACORN, and Health Access. Protesters branded “Big Insurance: Sick Of It,” signs and set up a “crime scene” near the Embarcadero where people told their stories of being harmed by health insurance companies’ bad practices. They said it is a crime that 64 percent of all bankruptcies are caused by medical debt and that every 12 minutes someone dies because they can’t afford the escalating cost of health insurance.

Union members from the Painters and Tapers, Sign and Display, and SEIU participated in the action.
They demanded that insurers support real reform that makes good health care truly affordable and includes a strong national public health insurance option to compete with the private for-profit insurance giants. Many called for a single payer, Medicare for All system. About 7 million Californians currently lack health insurance—and millions more are plagued with inadequate health insurance. And a recent Families USA report found that thanks to the catastrophic loss of jobs during this economic crisis, some 4 million people have lost health coverage.

Organizers from HCAN said that health insurance companies spend $641,000 per day lobbying against health care reform in Congress, while their customers find that even with coverage they are denied care or left with huge medical bills and debt.

A recent poll by the Washington Post and ABC News showed that the majority of the American people (57 percent) support the choice of a public health insurance option capable of competing with the private health insurance industry.

“Here’s the way we in labor see things,” AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Arlene Holt Baker said. “America is in a big fight over health care. The American people are on one side. Big Insurance is on the other side. Only one of us will win. We know if the insurance companies win, we all lose.”

Senate and House committees have passed various forms of health care reform legislation that must be reconciled and combined. Health care activists have also called for making sure amendments are included in the final bills that will allow states to pass single payer measures.

The Senate Finance Committee health reform bill slaps a 40 percent excise tax in 2013 on plans valued at more than $8,000 for individual coverage and $21,000 for family coverage.

The AFL-CIO is asking affiliated unions to select work sites to distribute stickers and solicit calls to Congress on November 5. The federation is demanding that the final health care bill includes a public health insurance plan option—which is essential to reform, eases the cost burden on individuals and families, ensures that employers have to pay a fair share of costs, and does not impose a tax on health care benefits.

For more information and updates, see www.aflcio.org and http://healthcareforamericanow.org/.