{"id":3832,"date":"2011-05-23T18:22:22","date_gmt":"2011-05-23T18:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pennaction.org\/pablog\/?p=3832"},"modified":"2011-07-29T04:22:53","modified_gmt":"2011-07-29T04:22:53","slug":"hcan-activists-disrupt-aetna","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/?p=3832","title":{"rendered":"HCAN Activists Disrupt Aetna Annual Meeting Call Aetna to account for \u201chypocrisy\u201d about the Affordable Care Act"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Penn ACTION dropped by Aetna’s Annual Meeting in Philadelphia to ask why the company says it is supporting the Affordable Care Act while it funnels millions of dollars of secret contributions to the Chamber of Commerce, which ran ads against the Affordable Care Act and members of Congress who supported it. \u00a0Don’t miss the great press coverage, which came from outlets all over the world. You can see coverage from the Wall Street Journal, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Hartford Courant, Bloomberg and the AP here<\/a>. \u00a0Here’s our press release describing the event:<\/p>\n

The Chairman and CEO of Aetna Insurance, Mark Bertolini, was telling attendees at the annual meeting that his company was working hard to implement the Affordable Care Act (ACA) when 8 protestors burst into the room shouting \u201cWe Need Health Care; Aetna\u2019s Not Fair.\u201d<\/p>\n

The protest, which was planned by the Health Care For America Now coalition and carried out by HCAN coalition members Action United, Philadelphia Unemployment Project, and Penn ACTION, focused on Aetna\u2019s hypocrisy about the health care reform. As Aetna\u2019s Executive Staff and its Board of Directors fled the room, Action United member Alicia Dorsey, took the floor and said, \u201cWe are here because for years Aetna has said it supports health care reform. Yet during that time, it has been funneling millions of dollar of secret contributions to the Chamber of Commerce, which ran ads against the ACA and members of Congress that supported it.\u201d At a press conference after the event, Marc Stier, Executive Director of Penn ACTION and state director of Health Care For America Now, added that, \u201cThe ads Aetna and others paid for were full of lies, especially in falsely claiming that the ACA reduced Medicare benefits.\u201d<\/p>\n

The disruption of the meeting lasted about ten minutes. Protestors continued to circle in front of the Le Meridien Hotel, where the meeting was being held, for thirty minutes. There they unfurled a golden parachute while denouncing the $76 million received by recently retired Aetna CEO Ron Williams. 1 <\/sup>\u201cWilliams made millions by denying our care,\u201d Ms. Dorsey said.<\/p>\n

At a brief rally after the event, Marc Stier explained why the group was so focused on Aetna. \u201cInsurance companies like Aetna are part of the most predatory industry in the country. Other companies pollute or sell cigarettes. But only insurance companies like Aetna target specific individuals for harm by denying them health insurance and health care. We\u2019re working for reform that will keep private insurance but make their business model moral. And they are fighting it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Philadelphia police detained three of the protestors for about 30 minutes. They were eventually release without charge.<\/p>\n

1<\/sup>Ron Williams, the Aetna CEO who retired in November, collected\u00a0 $20,730,968 in total compensation (salary, stock awards, option awards, non-equity incentive plan compensation, changes in pension plan value and deferred compensation, and miscellaneous compensation), plus he sold off $55,558,189 of AET shares in 2010 and 2011, bringing his golden parachute haul to $76,289,157.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Penn ACTION dropped by Aetna’s Annual Meeting in Philadelphia to ask why the company says it is supporting the Affordable Care Act while it funnels millions of dollars of secret contributions to the Chamber of Commerce, which ran ads against the Affordable Care Act and members of Congress who supported it. \u00a0Don’t miss the great press coverage, which came from outlets all over the world. You can see coverage from the Wall Street Journal, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Hartford Courant, Bloomberg and the AP here. \u00a0Here’s our press release describing the event: The Chairman and CEO of Aetna Insurance, Mark Bertolini, was telling attendees at the annual meeting that his company was working hard to implement the Affordable Care Act (ACA) when 8 protestors burst into the room shouting \u201cWe Need Health Care; Aetna\u2019s Not Fair.\u201d Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[45,123],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p35YuU-ZO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3832"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3832"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6182,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3832\/revisions\/6182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}