(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)
NEW YORK — On October 28th the heavy rain and the strong, cold winds didn’t dampen the determination of the demonstrators at the offices of Wellpoint – the largest health insurance company in the country. Wellpoint has 35 million customers, it’s revenues were $61 billion in 2008, it’s profits were $2.5 billion, it’s CEO, Angela Braly, makes $9.5 million, and the company spent $7.8 million for lobbying over the past 2 years. According to Consumer Watchdog, Wellpoint pushed workers in California to write their elected officials, attend town hall meetings, and ask their family and friends to help influence the public debate on healthcare reform in a company e-mail in August, 2009.
The event organizers, Mobilization for Health Care for All, stated, “As healthcare industry money and influence has continued to dominate Congress, anger among ordinary citizens has escalated. As a result,…Mobilization for Health Care for All – has formed to organize a wave of civil disobedience actions across the nation to demand real reform that goes to the heart of the problem: the need to eliminate the private health insurance industry and replace it with an expanded and improved Medicare for All system”. *The event in N.Y. is one of 18 planned in cities across the country this week. It is the 3rd civil disobedience action in N.Y. in the past 4 weeks, the others being at Aetna (9/29) and United Health Group (10/15).
(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)
The demonstration started with about 50 participants picketing in front of 1 Liberty Plaza in lower Manhattan where Wellpoint has their offices. A significant number of police were there too. At a certain point 9 demonstrators donned T-shirts that said “Patients Not Profits” on the front and “Medicare for All” on the back and stood, with arms linked, in front of the building’s doors. They chanted “Patients not Profits” with the other participants still on the sidewalk. After a few minutes they turned to enter the building at which point the building security, still in the lobby, ran toward the rotating doors trying to jam them with their bodies so that the demonstrators could not enter. Realizing what was about to happen, those planning to sit-in rushed and 5 got in before security could stop them. The other 4 sat down in front of the rotating doors.
The police then began the arrests. Everyone was handcuffed with their hands behind their backs. About 5 of the 9 arrested went limp. Some were carried out by 4 police officers but in 2 cases 2 officers put their arm through the arms of the demonstrators and dragged them forward to the police van. The police also lined up separating those being arrested from the other demonstrators. People who are carried or dragged face additional charges because they are viewed as resisting arrest. As people were being put into the police van the demonstrators on the sidewalk were chanting, “Arrest the profiteers. Arrest the profiteers.”
(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)
Most of the people arrested were young. One, Simone Moss, a student at Hunter College said, “The legislation passed by the Senate Finance Committee was written by Liz Fowler, a former V.P. of Public Policy for Wellpoint. Ms Fowler currently serves as Sr. Aid to Senator Max Baucus and has penned a bill that delivers huge tax payer subsidies to the insurance industry, while leaving Americans uninsured or underinsured. We are going to Wellpoint to demand they stop blocking real reform and start saving lives”.
Cameron Gibson, a medical student at SUNY, Brooklyn, said, “I’m here to represent the medical student community in the fight for single payer. I think it is immoral that we allow the insurance industry to make a profit off of health, and we don’t treat it as a human right”.
Katie Robbins, the Assistant National Coordinator for Healthcare – Now said, “The national debate on health reform keeps focusing on your choice of private insurance plans, but choosing your own private insurance is like choosing your own assailant in a dark alley. It’s a false choice. What the American people want is free choice of their own doctor and hospital which they get under Medicare for All. These brave people are standing up by sitting down for the right to health care”.
(Photo: Bud Korotzer / NLN)
The people demonstrating in the rain were saying, loud and clear, that it is unacceptable for Wellpoint to spend $7.8 million lobbying against meaningful reform, it is unacceptable for Wellpoint to profit from a status quo that either kills of bankrupts thousands every year, and it is unacceptable for Wellpoint to practice savage capitalism and call it the free market. Healthcare has become one of the major human rights issues of our time.
* ON 10/30 Mobilization reported that in Louisville, KY 7 of the many demonstrators who occupied the Humana lobby yesterday spent the whole night there. Their sit-in lasted over 24 hours. In Baltimore Dr. Margaret Flowers was arrested at Care First despite the risk of a 6 month jail sentence for violating her probation for a previous arrest. She was released the next morning despite her efforts to remain in police custody until the Care First CEO agreed to a public meeting with her. In Philadelphia 13 people were arrested blocking the doors to Blue Cross/Blue Shield. They are all still in police custody. Judy Esber, a young union organizer, was among them and said that she is going to stay in jail until 100 new people commit themselves to sitting-in and risking arrest. Mobilization said, “To finally win Medicare for all, hundreds, and perhaps thousands more of us will need to step-up to put our bodies between the insurance companies and our democracy”.
