Healthcare YES! Insurance Companies NO!
Protest the Insurance Companies'  Convention in SF

On June 19, hundreds of people from all walks of life demonstrated in San Francisco at the national convention of health insurance companies. For years, these companies have bankrupted us, denied us healthcare, and ripped apart the social safety net. Now they want to force themselves down the throats of our 47 million with no health coverage.

We demand single-payer healthcare: equal, comprehensive, low-cost, accessible healthcare for everyone. It would be delivered by today's doctors, clinics, and hospitals, but paid for by a single, publicly-accountable government-operated agency. No insurance companies! In California, it’s SB 840. Nationally, it’s HR 676.

Inside the convention, executives of America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) met with top political and policy advisors of both parties to create "universal healthcare" by forcing everyone to buy private health insurance. Everyone pays unaffordable premiums, deductibles, and co-pays. Poor people get worse care. Government spends billions to (barely) help poor people pay their premiums. It’s welfare for insurance companies and Katrina-care for us.

Outside, at our demonstration, nationally-recognized advocates and legislators for single-payer healthcare spoke, along with health workers, victims of insurance abuse, long-time union members with no healthcare, seniors for whom Medicare is not enough, and people driven into poverty by healthcare costs.

National attention was focused on this convention because of the healthcare crisis, and the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee held simultaneous demonstrations in over a dozen cities across the country. We threw these parasites’ sugary words of concern for the uninsured back in their teeth. Healthcare YES! Insurance Companies NO!