Citizen's Posse Serves Warrant Against Health Insurers

Health insurance executives who came to Washington's Ritz-Carlton Hotel for their big trade conference on March 9 were greeted by a "citizen's posse" armed with arrest warrants charging them with crimes ranging from fraud to the involuntary manslaughter of 45,000 people who could not get health coverage.

James Parks, in his account for the AFL-CIO Blog, wrote that "the boisterous, energetic, diverse crowd marched from the AFL-CIO and AFSCME buildings and Dupont Circle to the sound of beating drums and shouted slogans like, “Blocking health care is a crime” and “Health care can’t wait.” The crowd was so large, it completely encircled the block-long Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Washington, D.C., where the front group for the nation’s biggest insurance companies, the America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) is meeting."

Former governor and Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean helped kick off the protest, which also included remarks from several labor leaders; Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP’s Washington bureau; and several citizens with first-person accounts of how they or a family member had been denied care.

The Huffington Post interviewed several people at the protest:

"I know it from both sides; the system's broken," said Terence Gerace, a doctor and cancer survivor from Washington. "It's a for-profit system. A significant amount of cost goes to executives, and not the providers, and it needs to be rectified. It's an immoral system as it currently stands."
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Gerace said that at one point he was charged $6,000 for a minor medical test. "The public option is the best way to keep the companies more honest and more competitive," he said.

Paul Shenkyr, 51, carried a homemade sign reading "My Daughter Is Not a Pre-Existing Condition." He told HuffPost: "I'm here trying to make it difficult for insurance executives to have a meeting. They like to deny health care to people who are pregnant, among others. What kind of a policy is that?"

"I think it's a real shame that this country doesn't have some sort of insurance that covers everyone, said Chony Gallardo, an elderly immigrant from Spain. "I have enjoyed, all my life, government-run health insurance. So when I came to this country and I saw the state of affairs, I was dismayed. Now, I am living with American for-profit health insurance."

Gallardo said that the insurance companies have constantly changed her policy rules in order to make more money. "The small print is always somewhere."

Watch Health Care for America Now's video of the demonstration.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future