Profits were again up for the country's modern day Scrooge, UnitedHealth Group CEO (and former Arthur Anderson CFO) Stephen Hemsley. Christmas would be bright for him, sitting on stock options worth over ¾ of a billion dollars. Hemsley was safely tucked in for a long winter's nap in his mansion complex next to exclusive but frozen Lake Minnetonka in Minnesota. So it seemed a perfect time for activist spirits to pay a visit to the CEO to try and make him see the error of his ways.
The spirits were still a mile away when a Jacob Marley-like neighbor, the quintessential "bah, humbug, it's F*!@&#! Christmas" type, dropped by in his Mercedes to try and protect his insurance tycoon friend from any such visit.
Undeterred, the democratic activists felt the true spirit of Christmas Past and Present with them and hiked .7 mile, caroling all the way, over the frozen lake to the shoreline in back of Hemsley's mansion. Young Bjorn's account of their visit follows. The poignant scene was even captured by two local TV channels (here and here).
Today the Senate health care bill is looking very much like the system that Hemsley's company was lobbying for. It looks like Hemsley is on the verge of a major victory, and after getting paid more than $16 million in total compensation since 2007 and sitting on $744 million in stock options, it's looking like Hemsley is about to get a lot richer as a result of his company's lobbying efforts and the continued denial of his customers' claims. Because Hemsley loves lobbying so much we decided that we should lobby him. Unfortunately however United HealthCare does not allow us to stand outside the corporate boardrooms to speak with Hemsley directly, so instead we decided to go take a walk across the frozen surface of Lake Minnetonka to the shore where Hemsley's $7.8 million mansion is located.
Unlike Hemsley we were not asking for a mandate forcing individuals to buy private insurance, instead the only mandate that we are pushing for is a mandate that all Americans are able to receive health care without having to worry about having to pay for Hemsley's obscene salary.
We held a rally behind Hemsley's home with banners that held messages such as "Health Care not Wealth Care", "Down With Insurance Companies" and "Health Care is a Human Right". We sang songs, participated in chants and we heard a passionate call for real health care reform from Dr. Elizabeth Frost, a family practice physician who is tired of seeing the insurance industry deny her patients the care that they need and is taking a stand for universal single payer Medicare for all.
Hemsley may be uncomfortable with us gathering on the lake outside his home, but we promise him that we will stop making him uncomfortable the moment he stops profiting from the denial of the claims of his customers. Any discomfort we caused Hemsley by holding banners outside his home is nothing compared to the discomfort felt by the millions of Americans who need health care but are denied access to it. We can not allow people like Hemsley to profit off denying people health care without feeling a public backlash for their actions. If we want health care reform we need to stand for real reform and we need to stand against United HealthCare. May Peace Bless Us Everyone! Bjorn
So we did our best to get through to this modern-day Scrooge, to impress on him that he ought to change his ways, if only for the good of his own soul. We could not bear to wait, however, for the "Ghost of Christmas Future" to show up and the final death scene to play out. The spectre of the growing gap between the wealthiest ½ of one percent that live in such multi-million dollar mansions and so many suffering Bob Cratchits, the common people whose homes have been foreclosed, who are dying in the thousands each year due to lack of health care, and whose kids are the ones sent to fight endless wars to expand the CEOs' empire is almost too much for anyone to bear.
In Dicken's Christmas Carol, Scrooge does end up crying out: "Ghost of the Future, I fear you more than any spectre I have seen!" So perhaps there's hope that we, like old Ebenezer, will all wake up too and ask if it's not already too late to reverse the dark future that otherwise awaits.
