Time for Civil Disobedience
We need your support for a new campaign of non-violent, civil disobedience targeting the private health insurance industry.
This past spring, 13 brave individuals were arrested for disrupting Senate Finance hearings on health reform, chaired by Sen. Max Baucus. They were disgusted with witness panels, filled with private insurance execs and their cronies, that did NOT include even one single-payer expert.
Since Baucus only listened to the interests of millionaire CEOs and their lobbyists, it should be no surprise that a former CIGNA exec. called the Senate Finance Committee’s recently released bill, “a gift to the private health insurance industry that should be renamed the ‘Insurance Industry Profit Protection and Enhancement Act.'”
We can’t stand for this disaster. The Mobilization for Health Care for All is launching a campaign of nonviolent sit-ins at insurance company offices so we can stand up to end a system that profits by denying people care and puts insurance company bureaucrats between doctors and patients. Time for Medicare for all, a single-payer, national healthcare system.
Healthcare-NOW! has decided to support this effort, and to encourage local coalitions in our network that are ready and willing to participate.
The PHIMG (Private Health Insurance Must Go) coalition in NYC will begin this campaign on September 29th. Other local groups are planning subsequent actions.
Actions may vary, but the central idea is to target major private insurance companies because they must not, and can not, be part of any solution to our healthcare crisis.
We need your help. Let us know if you’d like to participate in, or organize, a civil disobedience action near you. Go here to sign up to sit in and join the nonviolent resistance today!
Another way you can help make this campaign successful is with a donation. Just click here.
Thanks for all that you do,
Healthcare-NOW! National Staff
I’m glad to hear of this direct action…it’s long overdue and I would be glad to help organize something here in San Francisco. I’m a volunteer with Single Payer Now and will try to pull something off for tomorrow at the Blue Shield office here.
I would like to see this extend to all insurance corporate HDQ in the Bay Area and include our representatives offices (Boxer, Feinstein, Pelosi, Speier) but we will need more notice for people.
I think that an effective non-violent act of civil disobedience would be to have a National “Call In Sick” Day. If we picked a date, we could tell everyone to call in sick and then spend the day calling and writing their congresspeople, watching Michael Moore’s movie, and celebrating their good health (if they have it).
If Congress doesn’t believe in health insurance for all Americans, it should abolish its own government-run health care program. No member of Congress has any right to health care unless we all have health care!
Why should the elderly get health care in the form of Medicare if children can’t have health care?
The insurance agencies and their paid lobbyists should go to jail for the scams they’ve hatched to lie to Americans including fraudulent bills like the ones I received. Why doesn’t the FBI bust them?
I have heard a rally is planned in New York’s Central Park 2 pm November 15th. Does anyone know anything about it?
October 15th?? I thought there was one in Cleveland that day…i feel so out of the loop because I have a very old pc and no cellphone. I want to go, but it is a matter of money. I could afford to drive to Cleveland, but I am not sure i am getting messages correctly…I am on Medicaid, so you know how broke I have to be…
I agree the FORCED HEALTH INSURANCE bill does deserve civil disobediance action; however, not for the same reason. How, if and when I get health care / insurance is an invidual decision that is most appropriatly left up to the individual. Its none of the government’s business, particularly the federal government.
There is no such thing as free health insurance. Most individuals should pay for most normal medical expenses and use catestrophic insuarance to cover those unforseen, less likely, more expensive events. The cash system reduces costs and cuts out the middle man.
The Obama administration and associated scumbags in congress have trashed the constitution and it will not go unpunished.
there are insurance agencies that are scam too so make sure that you deal with legit insurance agencies -,”