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Did you know you can be arrested for asking why your insurance rates increased?
A few weeks ago, Joe Szakos, Executive Director of the Virginia Organizing Project, was wondering why his organization's health insurance provider increased its rates to 14.1%. So, he along with three of the organization's Board Members visited his provider, Anthem, to ask why it was increasing its rate while at the same time using its resources to lobby against health care reform with a public health insurance option? The answer he received? None. Instead, he was hauled away in handcuffs.
You know, they say the customer is always right. But I guess that doesn't hold true if you ask the hard questions.
Just ask Joe Szakos.
Joe Szakos leads the Virginia Organizing Project (VOP), a grassroots organization in Virginia that currently is organizing for health care reform in 2009. Szakos's organization employs dozens of people, and they get their health care through Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
Imagine how he felt when he received notice that Anthem was going to increase the organization's premiums by 14.1%. And to add insult to injury, he received this e-mail from Anthem:
We strongly support reform that builds a strong, sustainable private-sector health care system - and strongly oppose creating a government-run health plan. We are urging our elected officials in Washington to take bipartisan action that will accomplish that. We are educating policymakers in Washington and working with our trade associations to encourage Congress to build on the current system and not disrupt the quality, affordable coverage on which our members depend....
As our elected officials debate health care, they need to hear directly from you.
So Joe and three other VOP Board Members drove to Anthem's office to ask why they were increasing their premiums and using that money to fight against real health care reform for our communities.
There was no explanation. Just an arrest. The health care industry has an iron grip on the health of our communities and are reaping immense profits from keeping the status quo. This incident is another example of how these companies will pull the wool over our eyes to maintain their monopoly on the system.
As Joe Szakos says in the video, it's about greed. And it's about the force used to satiate that greed.
Szakos's trial is scheduled for Tuesday, September 22nd. Szakos’s legal team has subpoenaed Anthem’s CEO C. Burke King and director of public relations Scott Golden to appear in court.
This has the potential to make giant waves in the debate over health care reform. Spread the word.
Dennis Chin is the New Media Specialist for the Center for Community Change.
