Run time: 05:25
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Scgw-WtyLlA
Posted on YouTube: March 10, 2010
By YouTube Member: MoxNewsDotCom
Views on YouTube: 65
Posted on DU: March 10, 2010
By DU Member: democracy1st
Views on DU: 642 |
http://MOXNews.com/March 09, 2010 CNN
Hundreds if not thousands of protesters and labor activists descended upon the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington today to try to make things a little more difficult for the health insurance lobbyists and executives gathered inside.
The protest was organized by Health Care for America Now, a group that describes itself as being "fed up with skyrocketing premiums, denials of care and claims, and insurance companies spending tens of millions of dollars to kill or manipulate reform." The lobbying group America's Health Insurance Plans was holding its annual policy conference at the hotel.
Protesters first gathered in nearby Dupont Circle, where former Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean told them: "We deserve a vote! Are you for the insurance companies or are you for the American people?"
The enthusiastic crowd -- which organizers put at 5,000 people but appeared a bit less -- then marched seven blocks to the Ritz Carlton chanting "Hey, hey, ho, ho, Insurance companies have got to go!" and staged a mass "citizens' arrest" of the insurance executives participating in the conference.
Among the protesters was Lillian Allen, a 101-year-old woman from Pittsburgh who is passionate about health care reform. Allen, a regular on the D.C. health care protest scene, told HuffPost: "Everybody ought to have health insurance. What would I do if I didn't have it? I wouldn't be turning 102 in April."
"I know it from both sides; the system's broken," said Terence Gerace, a doctor and cancer survivor from Washington. "It's a for-profit system. A significant amount of cost goes to executives, and not the providers, and it needs to be rectified. It's an immoral system as it currently stands."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/09/health-care-protesters-fa_n_492011.html