Subject: [big campaign] New Huff Post from Creamer-The Coming Battle of the Ritz Carlton
From: [email-masked]
To: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 4 Mar 2010 08:41:29 EST
List-Id: <bigcampaign.googlegroups.com>

The Coming Battle of the  Ritz Carlton 

President Obama’s announcement yesterday began the final chapter in the  
14-month war over health care reform.  The decisive battle will obviously take 
place on the floor of  Congress.  But the most symbolically  powerful 
battle may take place next week some miles from the Capitol, at the  Ritz Carlton 
Hotel on the edge of Washington’s  tony Georgetown  neighborhood.  
That’s where executives from America’s health care industry will gather 
under  the banner of AHIP (America’s Health Insurance Plans) to  plot – and 
then execute – a last-ditch attempt to defeat health insurance  reform.  
That’s also where, on Tuesday, March 9th, thousands of  demonstrators from 
Health Care for America Now (HCAN) and allied groups will  mass to confront 
the insurance executives – and their attempts to effectively  deny quality 
health care to millions of Americans.  
The term “battle” is entirely  appropriate.  The insurance  executives who 
run America’s health insurance companies  are, in fact, waging war on the 
American public.  Their goal is the continued domination  of the American 
health care system.  They want to be able to continue to raise their rates more 
than three  times faster than wages – and twice as fast as the underlying 
cost of health  care – so they can continue to gorge themselves with record 
profits. They want  to continue to siphon off the healthiest, wealthiest 
customers and deny access  to insurance for anyone with a “pre-existing condition
” or illness.  
Just like all wars, their war on the American family costs tens of  
thousands of lives and untold suffering.   Each year, the lack of health insurance  
costs 45,000 lives.  In other words,  each year we lose 80% as many 
Americas to insurance industry greed  as died in the entire Vietnam War.   
What’s worse, these insurance executives don’t get a first-hand look at  
the suffering and death that results from their policies, or their attempts 
to  block reform.  They manage their war  from pristine office towers. They 
don’t have to look into the eyes of a husband  whose wife has just died of 
cancer that could have been cured if it were caught  early – but went 
undetected because for financial reasons she had no insurance  and kept putting off 
a routine check up.  
They don’t have to face the family who lost their home -- and everything  
else -- to bankruptcy because an uninsured medical emergency wiped out the  
fruits of decades of hard work. 
They don’t have to explain themselves to the millions of Americas who  
worry they are just one pink slip away from losing their insurance coverage and  
know that a spouse’s history of cancer or heart disease or diabetes will 
prevent  them from ever getting insurance again.  
On next Tuesday, thousands of those Americans will demand to confront  
those executives in the lovely halls and conference rooms of the Ritz.  
Like the mythical mobster Tony Soprano, the kids of these insurance  
executives think their parents have respectable jobs.  In fact, just like Tony 
Soprano, they  traffic in lives and suffering in order to make more and more 
money for  themselves.  
Time to rip off the patina of respectability.  
Take people like Ed Hanway, the former CIGNA CEO who retired at the end  of 
last year with a $73 million golden parachute – money he earned by denying  
coverage to people like Nataline Sarkisian.  Nataline died in 2007, just 
before  Christmas.  She was 17.  She died because CIGNA wouldn’t pay for  
Nataline’s liver transplant – even though she had health insurance.   
The average transplant operation and hospital stay costs about  $250,000.  
Ed Hanway’s $73 million  golden parachute would have bought 292 liver 
transplants.  Nataline only needed  one. 
Or people like Wellpoint’s CEO Angela Braly – who last year took down  
almost $10 million in compensation.  Wellpoint’s Anthem Blue Cross division 
just announced a 39% premium  increase; it says it needs more money to meet its 
expenses – like Angela’s $10  million salary.  And by the way,  Wellpoint’
s profits for the fourth quarter of 2009 skyrocketed to $2.7 billion –  
accomplished by actually providing health insurance to 185,000 fewer policy 
holders.  
Or people like AHIP chief lobbyist, Karen Ignagni, who once worked to  
promote health care for average people at the AFL-CIO.  She took her thirty 
pieces of silver and  switched sides.  
These people are coming to Washington to use their enormous economic  power 
to prevent their fellow Americans from having secure, affordable health  
care. They cannot be allowed to succeed.  
In fact, they should be greeted with the same enthusiasm with which we  
would greet the forces of an invading army. They should be met at National 
Airport and Union Station with signs  declaring they are unwelcome in the nation’
s capital.   
HCAN has sent letters asking the dozen speakers listed on their agenda to  
cancel their appearances.  HCAN has  demanded that these academics and 
consultants stop giving aid and comfort to the  enemy – stop giving them the 
cover of respectability.  
These insurance executives are  not here to negotiate.  They are not  here 
to shape legislation.  They are  here to stop health care reform dead in its 
tracks.  They will not be “convinced” to allow  health care reform to pass 
the Congress.  They must be defeated.  
Robert Creamer is a long-time political organizer and  strategist, and 
author of the recent book:  “Stand Up Straight: How Progressives Can Win,” 
available on _Amazon.com._ 
(http://www.amazon.com/Listen-Your-Mother-Straight-Progressives/dp/0979585295/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1213241439&sr=8-
1)  

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