As live news choppers thrummed overhead, some 600+ people from Philadelphia and its suburbs rallied, chanted and marched in support of health care reform. They came together to hear and voice their support for CIGNA whistle-blower Wendell Potter; Arlene Holt Baker, Executive Vice-president AFL-CIO; Pat Eiding, President Philadelphia AFL-CIO, Dr. Valerie Arkoosh, President-elect, National Physicians Alliance; Eileen Connelly, ED, SEIU PA State Council, Wendell Young IV, President UFCW Local 1776, and Stacie Ritter, a Manheim, PA, mother of twins afflicted with leukemia whose care was denied by CIGNA Insurance.

Before the rally began, a delegation of leaders from the event’s coalition of union labor and progressive groups presented CIGNA CEO H. Edward Hanway with this list of demands:

"We are here to demand that CIGNA CEO H. Edward Hanway, who made $ 22,716,454 in 2007 to deny care to CIGNA customers, agrees to the following, effective immediately:

1. CIGNA will not stand between a doctor and a patient when it comes to deciding what care that patient needs. If a qualified physician recommends care, no one at CIGNA will substitute his or her judgment for the judgment of the patient’s physician in deciding if care is medically necessary.
2. CIGNA will not deny or drop coverage for a pre-existing medical condition.
3. CIGNA will terminate any policy or incentive that rewards employees financially or otherwise for denying care and rejecting claims.
4. CIGNA will not use any resources—including funds, employees, and facilities—to oppose any aspect of the health reform proposals supported by President Obama and being considered by members of the United States Congress. "

CIGNA’s response to these demands was briefly broadcast last night on local TV station CBS3′s 11:00PM newscast, but there is no web trace of it yet today, as of 12:27AM 9/24/09. A phone call placed to CBS3′s newsroom produced the CIGNA response that was broadcast on a slide at about 11:07PM Tuesday night, following 15 seconds of aerial footage of the march as it proceeded down 16th Street. CIGNA’s response reads:

“America is engaged in an important debate about how to improve our health care system although we respect that there are different opinions on the solutions those opinions must be based on fact.”

Wendell Potter, the CIGNA whistle-blower and Philadelphia resident, was met with a roar of cheers from the crowd. He thanked the assembled for their health care reform efforts, and he briefly recounted his own bold decision to speak out against CIGNA’s ‘money-first, people-last’ policies.

Arlene Holt Baker, Executive Vice President, AFL-CIO, forcefully delivered her message for a strong commitment to health care reform for all of America’s citizens. In video noted below, she riled up the crowd’s cheers and shouts, as she stated in part, "It’s about time we called some of the shots!"

Stacie Ritter shared her gut-wrenching report about how CIGNA capriciously canceled her daughters’ critical medical coverage. As Ms. Ritter, a slender petite woman, described her struggle in measured tones, a little red-headed boy about 4-years-old wandered in front of the podium, listening, watching closely as he held up a homemade purple and blue sign that read ‘Public Option Now!’ Those gathered in the front near the stage cooed to the little boy, an elderly woman in a wheelchair reached for him gently as his father appeared nearby.

When HCAN’s PA Director, Marc Stier, announced that Tuesday was speaker Dr. Arkoosh’s birthday when he introduced her, the crowd broke out singing, ‘Happy Birthday" to her before she took the mike.

UFCW1776 President Wendell Young gave a fiery message to the crowd gathered at Liberty Place, adjacent to CIGNA’s headquarters, and led the assembled in rising chants.

PennAction’s Jeff Garis, a Mennonite minister, used a megaphone to lead the assembled in chants that echoed around the surrounding skyscrapers. Mr Garis carried in his own old, wooden podium to add to the borrowed stage and sound equipment that was set up at City Hall. Supporting MoveOn member crews drove in from Scranton, Wilkes-barre, Montgomeryville and Providence, RI, to help with the event.

These 600+ people — some in wheelchairs, some with children in strollers, many carrying signs and pictures of their loved ones now lost to insurance denial or the lack of it — gathered at Philadelphia City Hall’s Dilworth Plaza beginning at 4:30PM. After the speakers (listed above) concluded their remarks on a small stage set up on the Plaza, the 600+ attendees — activists, labor, speakers and interested passers-by — marched from City Hall up Market Street and then down 16th Street to CIGNA’s headquarters at Liberty Place. The crowd chanted, tooted whistles as they went. About 30 supporters traveled in to Philadelphia from western and northern suburbs via carpools and train caravans, as well.

Two Billionaires For Wealthcare members added their droll, satirical flourish to the orderly and enthusiastic crowd.

Shouts of ‘Buck Baucus,’ and ‘CIGNA! SHAME!’ rose from the 600+ supporters, above the din of TV news choppers. Rush hour traffic slowed around the rally and march as the headed-for-home commuters honked their horns, their passengers yelling out windows in support to the marchers who filled the sidewalks, spilling into the street two blocks away.

This event was jointly hosted by a coalition of health care reform activist groups — MoveOn, Health Care for American Now (HCAN), Organizing for America, HealthCare4All, PennAction, PhilaPuP, PDA, ACORN and others — and labor unions. The unions out in force at the rally and march were leaders and members of the AFL-CIO, SEIU, AFSCME, UFCW, AFT and others.

One of the Philadelphia MoveOn Council member’s email invitations read, in part: "The nexus between health care reform and climate change legislation: a cleaner planet — without the security threats inherent in foreign oil dependence, the devastation of oil sands exploration and coal mountaintop rape — can really mean a safer planet with lower health care costs for all of us."

VIDEOS OF THE PHILADELPHIA BIG INSURANCE:SICK OF IT RALLY AND MARCH: http://www.youtube.com/user/BleuZ00m
http://www.youtube.com/user/BleuZ00m
shot by Javier Pazos and
i
http://www.youtube.com/user/1956dali
shot by Dolores Lombardi. Both are MoveOn Philadelphia Council members.
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