“The protesters interrupted a presentation by Republican pollster Bill McInturff, whose work for AHIP on the series of early-90s “Harry and Louise” anti-health-care reform commercials has been called by Advertising Age ‘among the best conceived and executed public affairs advertising programs in history.’

AHIP represents insurers who provide coverage to more than 200 million Americans, the group says. Singing out against them were a small group of protesters from the group Billionaires for Wealthcare, which specializes in dressing up as members of the groups it is critiquing (often in an exaggerated or satirical way, as with top hats or suspenders).”

Outside an opulent skyscraper in Chicago, a white middle-class lady’s picket sign said it all: “She could not wait!” The sign is filled to overflowing with the photo of a radiant young woman. JENNY, 1984-2009, reads the caption. She was only twenty-five years old.

On a cold Chicago morning, some forty or fifty of us had decided that we couldn’t wait for the House and the Senate to pass a mutilated health-care bill. We held signs and chanted slogans in front of the corporate headquarters: “CIGNA profits, people die, Medicare for all.” Meanwhile, seven principled individuals, including health-care professionals and a physician, had gone inside the glass-domed reception hall to sit down on the floor and demand that the giant insurance company immediately approve all doctor-recommended treatments for its insurees. The police was all they got for an answer.