HCAN to McConnell: Reform Supporters Have Been to Your Office
Were you too busy defending insurance companies to notice?
Washington, DC – On the Senate floor Saturday in an extended defense of obscene health insurance executive compensation, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said “I have not met one” person in Kentucky who supports health reform. Since the Minority Leader clearly hasn't been paying attention to his home state, Health Care for America Now (HCAN) – the nation's largest health care campaign – offers the following reminders that Kentuckians both need and want reform.
"I know that Senator McConnell has heard from people in Kentucky who support health care reform. I visited his office in Louisville along with a group of people who delivered the message that we can¹t wait in Kentucky for reform that gives us good, affordable coverage with the choice of a public option,” said Reverend Phil Tom, Associate with the Presbyterian Church Community Ministry Office, Louisville.
On October 29, 2009, community and religious leaders held a rally outside of the offices of Humana, a for-profit health insurance company that has made $3.1 billion in profit since 2000. Health care reform supporters chanted that “health care is a human right,” marched across the street, peacefully entered the building, and staged a sit-in for the next 24 hours. The action was led by Rev. David Bos, a retired Louisville Presbyterian minister. Watch the rally: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaJOKKQx7no
The same day as the rally, the Minority Leader defended health insurance companies on the Senate floor, complaining the bill would “hit” insurers “with a giant new nondeductible tax” and calling legislation “a bill of goods being forced on the middle class when they can least afford it.”
“If Senator McConnell says he hasn’t met supporters of reform, it must be because he’s ignored the everyday people who visit his office and instead huddled with the insurance company executives whose multi-million dollar salaries he defends,” said Richard Kirsch, National Campaign Manager, Health Care For America Now. “More than 600,000 people in Kentucky are currently uninsured, and for those who have insurance, premiums are going up almost three times faster than wages. Senator McConnell has to have been hiding under a rock in his office in DC to claim the people of his state neither want nor need relief from skyrocketing health care costs and increasing lack of access to good health care they can afford.”
"McConnell may prefer to spend his time meeting with the insurance industry executives that have given him $523,877 in campaign contributions than to meet with the thousands of hard-working Kentuckians that desperately need affordable coverage," Kirsch concluded.
The following are news accounts of rallies and protests in Kentucky and published letters to the editor in support of reform:
Kentucky Post: Protestors Plan To Sleep In Humana Building
Courier-Journal: Health Care Protesters Plan to Spend Night in Humana Building
Associated Press: Protestors plan to sleep in Humana Building
Kentucky Herald-Ledger: Letters to the Editor (11/27/09) (includes four - one by a physician – in support of reform)
