Glendale protest leads to arrests

DOWNTOWN — Police arrested seven protesters at the California headquarters of health insurer CIGNA Corporation on Wednesday after they refused to leave the lobby of the Glendale building while chanting slogans like “Patients, not profits. Medicare for all.”

The group of insurance-industry critics was part of a larger demonstration in front of the building on Brand Boulevard, where dozens of protesters paced the sidewalk waving signs and denouncing private insurers as focusing on their bottom lines at the expense of offering complete care for the sick.

“We are so upset about the private insurance system destroying the medical profession,” said Matt Hendrickson, an emergency physician at a Fresno hospital who was wearing a white doctor’s coat and holding a set of charts allegedly detailing insurance profits.

Hendrickson was one of the seven demonstrators who walked into the CIGNA building and refused to leave until they had an opportunity to speak with a company representative. No one from the company responded.

A team of more than two dozen police officers, including 14 in riot gear, later arrested the group for trespassing, unlawfully assembling and refusing to disperse.

CIGNA dismissed the protest as unproductive and argued it was pushing for health-care overhaul plans that would change the way care is distributed.

“Getting arrested in an office — what does that do to furthering that goal?” said Chris Curran, a spokesman for CIGNA. “It’s just not constructive. That’s why the industry has put together a constructive proposal that will expand access, control costs and improve the quality of care.”

CIGNA is part of a group of insurers that have supported the majority of President Obama’s proposals for health-care reform, but disagreed on the so-called public option provision.

Insurers argue adding a publicly subsidized health insurance provider won’t help to increase competition and drive down ballooning premiums, as the president and many Democrats have suggested would happen with a government-run plan.

Protesters agreed with insurers on that point, but argued that the private insurance system should be dissolved altogether in favor of a single-payer, publicly funded healthcare system.