Unions Protest As Health Insurers Plot to Kill Reform

APWU officers and staff joined hundreds of other union members and healthcare advocates at a spirited demonstration Oct. 22 to demand that the health insurance industry end its efforts to thwart reform legislation.

The union members packed the streets adjacent to the Capital Hilton in Washington, DC, where the giant health insurance companies’ lobby group, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), was conducting a strategy meeting.

Before the short march to the AHIP meeting site, the activists assembled at the AFL-CIO headquarters building in Washington, DC, where Richard Trumka, the union federation’s new president, outlined the principles that must underlie healthcare 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.

Trumka said:

“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. It’s about the families who will be with us at the Capital Hilton—the families who have 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.”

The families Trumka referred to were on hand to recount their own horror stories about being denied needed healthcare despite having insurance coverage. AHIP officials refused to meet with healthcare advocates or the seven families.

The insurance industry has spent record-breaking sums on disingenuous TV ads and lobbying Congress to protect the status quo of the current system.