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Single-Payer Healthcare Activists Challenge AHIP in San Diego

By Dave Keeler
June 5, 2009, San Diego, CA

Thursday morning, while members of the American Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) waited in the San Diego Convention Center to hear Jeb Bush and Dr. Howard Dean address the convention, 150 activists demonstrated outside chanting: “Healthcare YES, Insurance Companies NO” and “Single-Payer Now.”  



With nothing more than an agreement, two weeks earlier, that this convention of for-profit insurance companies’ accountants and plan administrators should not go unnoticed by single-payer healthcare activists, Progressive Democrats of America, California Nurses Association (CNA), Physicians for National Health Program, Single-Payer Now, California Teachers Association, along with support from more than ten other groups, put together an ad hoc rally plan.  



The groups converged to demand an end to the obscene for-profit health insurance companies continued  "managed health care" that has left over 47 million citizens without any coverage and an estimated 51 million without adequate coverage, has produced untold suffering, and has resulted in tens of thousands of families in bankruptcy or in debt without relief.   



The "murder by spreadsheet" insurance plan developers and administrators convened, sipped lattes, dined on sushi, compared drug industry supplied swag, including embroidered travel bags (supplied by Pfizer), and ridiculed the healthcare activists rallying outside the convention center.  



The orderly convention program was upset when two California Nurses Association members (who paid admission) stood and attempted to present the convention chair with a large, four-foot replica check made payable to the insurance companies in the amount of $11 billion dollars (the estimated yearly net profit of all insurance companies) to "just get out of the for-profit health insurance business" and let the single-payer option prevail and provide for all.  Not content with merely ejecting the nurses, the insurance bean counters and administrators demanded their arrest.  The San Diego Police Department proved cooler heads in politely escorting the nurses to the demonstrators waiting outside.



The impressive demonstration brought together determined activists at 8:00 a.m. on a mid-week workday and lasted three hours.  Media attention was evident, including the Spanish language network Telemundo.  The demonstration concluded with Bill Gallagher of CNA promising to return to the next year’s AHIP convention and every convention until single-payer universal healthcare for all is a reality.