Family Life

10.07.09 | FL News Team

Protestors in favor of sweeping healthcare reform are staging rallies across the country this week, including one in Minnesota Monday that saw six people arrested. All the rallies are being organized by a group called Health Care for America Now. The six people in Monday's protest were blocking the doors to the Minnetonka headquarters of insurer UnitedHealth Group. On Tuesday, thousands rallied in California in front of Anthem Blue Cross offices in cities from San Francisco down the coast to San Diego. The Health Care for America Now group is organizing similar protests in front of offices of major private health insurance companies to officially declare them a crime scene.

Health Care for America Now is making a strong push for federal healthcare reform legislation to include the so-called public option, which would add government-supported medical insurance into the mix available for the currently uninsured. Health Care for America Now spokeswoman Nancy Gomez says lack of health insurance is associated with as many as 45-thousand deaths each year in the U.S. and that 64-percent of all bankruptcies are caused by medical debt. Insurance companies say they're an easy target and that medical costs are much more to blame than insurance companies.