Direct Action Time: Stop the insurance companies!
Posted on March 1st, 2010 by Jason Rosenbaum in Take Action!
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Sometimes it's not enough to rally for reform. Sometimes it's not enough to protest your enemies. Sometimes, you have to take direct action.
And so, the street movement for health reform escalates on March 9th.
On March 9th at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Washington, DC, America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the insurance industry's main lobbyist group, is holding a conference on health reform. The topics for the conference comprise a virtual playbook on how to kill or maim health reform. Some of the planned sessions include:
- Health Care Reform: What Role Does the Media Play? (translation: How can insurance companies work the press to kill reform?)
- Addressing Health Care Market Reform through an Insurance Exchange: Essential Policy Components (led in part by a fellow from the right-wing Heritage Foundation)
- American Public Opinion on Health Reform: Implications for Mid-term Elections (translation: How can we dupe the public by lying about reform and beat politicians who are standing up for the popular parts of reform)
AHIP recommends health insurance company CEOs, executives, lawyers, and others attend.
We, the people can't let this stand. The insurance companies have committed what ought to be multiple heinous crimes against the American people, and now they're coming to town to finish the job on health reform. If the powers that be won't stop these criminals, we must.
On March 9th, the people will confront the big CEOs at their conference and make sure the people responsible are held accountable. And we'll make sure Congress hears us so loudly that they'll have to listen to us and not the insurance companies and their army of corporate lobbyists. They'll have to finish health reform and finish it right, so we can finally get the care that should be a right in this country.
You can join us, either in person in Washington or from home. We've got more information here.
The crimes these companies have committed will not stand unchallenged:
- They break contracts by selling you insurance and then denying you care
- They launder money through other front groups - including tens of millions through the ultra right-wing Chamber of Commerce
- They pervert our democracy by bribing public officials by spending millions per day on corporate lobbyists
- And 45,000 people die every year because they lack insurance
We are going to take them down.
No joke here - on March 9th, the American people will stand up a make the insurance companies stand down.
The only question is whether you'll be there to join us, either in person or online. We've got ways you can help, you just need to sign up and join the posse.
So, are you with us?
As atrocity as what they has already committed against millions and millions of American families, there will be manifold of that atrocity they are going to committed against our children and the American next generations should a comprehensive health care failed to passed. Basically, when a hcr failed to pass it goes without saying that what the insurance companies has been doing are right.
As badly as our health care system is right now a comprehensive health care reform is just a starting point. American lives cannot be any longer under the mercy of these companies decision for profit without accountability!!!
Block the conference? Are you really blocking the conference if your protest is scheduled to begin almost 3 hours after the conference starts?
I believe "shut it down" is the term of art.
Granfaloon. The cops will keep the few dozen people who show up blocks away. We'll get maybe an hour of meaningless street theatre and its back to business as usual. Business, unions, everyone uses lobbyists and Andy Stern sure isn't earning $17.00 an hour. Congress doesn't care — there was a story yesterday about how those guys pocket extra expense money they get for trips. And when they're called on it, they laugh and call the people punks. Rangel's corrupt, the governor of New York is defending a woman beater, the "Democrats" are in a race with the other guys to see who can be more apallingly criminal and dishonest. We're ruled by people who should be in jail.
Why don't you come by and see exactly what goes down?
I'll be in the neighborhood and what will go down is exactly what I wrote above. Let's say the "citizens arrest" is actually accomplished. What are you going to do with these people once they're in "custody?" Take them to the cops? The cops will free the executives and arrest you for assault, with maybe a little pepper spray for your effort. A real arrest, by the way, not a "let's play policeman" game. Stupid street theatre trivializes the issues and, in the minds of millions, brands everyone involved as clowns. Look at PETA — the least effective advocacy group out there. Hippies and die-in's and protest rallies didn't end the Vietnam War. It ended when tens of millions of ordinary people — the middle class — decided enough was enough and got rid of the warmongers in Congress and the White House who kept it going. Same thing here. So go have fun running around with stick-on paper badges. It's a lot easier than actually doing something like running for office or supporting honest, unbribed, caring lawmakers.
Hey, if this was the only thing we do to pass health reform, I'd be with you. But it's not. We make lots of phone calls, we support candidates and lawmakers, we prop up champions, we corral moderates, we canvass, we rally, and we do whatever we can to get it done.
Still, hoping you'll come by! Click the link above to RSVP.