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Thursday 29th July 2010 10:09 AM |
Demonstrators to target United Health shareholders' meeting
24 May 2007
| MINNEAPOLIS - To dramatize the need for health care reform, several organizations will demonstrate Tuesday outside the annual shareholders meeting of United Health Group. |
The demonstration will start at 9 a.m. Tuesday, May 29, at the Minneapolis Convention Center, 1301 Second Ave. S., Minneapolis.
The event will "decry the gap between need and greed as United Health Group CEO William McGuire, his replacement Stephen Helmsley, and other Minnesota HMO executives bilk billions in stock options derived from denying health insurance to half a million Minnesotans," organizers said.
"As a result demonstrators are calling for a move to an accountable, publicly–funded, single-payer health care system to stem the deepening health care crisis. The health care system deserves the same accountability that investors expect."
Speakers will include a patient suffering from clinical depression categorically denied coverage by Medica, an HMO whose insurance is administered by United Health Group; seniors in the "donut hole" cap on drug coverage of Medicare Part D, a UHG product; a clinic billing supervisor dealing with a morass of paperwork and billing code software produced by UHG's Ingenix; and practitioners denied payment for services by the United Health HMO.
Criminal lawsuits are still pending following the ouster last October of CEO McGuire and other executives due to stock option backdating fraud.
United Health Care is the largest HMO in the United States and McGuire was the highest-paid CEO in Minnesota history, with stock options totaling $2 billion. Helmsley, who replaced McGuire, has stock options in excess of $750 million. In contrast, the chief of Medicare, a single-payer system with the largest enrollment in the United States, makes $150,000 a year.
Meanwhile the number of uninsured Americans is approaching 50 million and millions more are under-insured.
The demonstration is organized by the Universal Health Care Action Network-MN (www.uhcan-mn.org ) Endorsers include Minnesota Physicians for a National Health Program, Schneider Drug, The Twin Cities Gray Panthers, West Bank Pharmacy and Franklin Drug.
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