Small business owners crash today's insurance lobby conference in Chicago

Small business owners from across the country are crashing today's fall conference of the health insurance lobby in downtown Chicago.

"Our businesses are facing dire choices - between being able to reinvest profits into the future of our businesses and meeting the ever-growing costs of health care coverage; between denying our employees coverage for needed medical services and having to cut their jobs entirely," business people from Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, and New Hampshire wrote in a letter to Karen Ignagni, President and CEO of the health insurance lobby .

The owners operating businesses ranging from t-shirts to auto parts and local community services from catering, to martial arts classes, home health care and restaurant owners.

In the letter, the business owners asked Ms. Ignagni to meet with them in Chicago next Tuesday, when AHIP holds its national fall conference at the Renaissance Hotel, and to hear their stories in person.

The signers include David Borris of Hell's Kitchen Catering, Northbrook, Illinois; Alton Johnson of AJ Body Shop, North Little Rock, Arkansas; Rick Poore of Design Wear, Lincoln, Nebraska; Kay Forbes-Smith of KFS, Evansville, Indiana; Mecheall Williams of Subchaser Inc., Bossier, Louisiana; Jan Wood of JP Wood Martial Arts, Palatine, Illinois; ReShonda Young of Alpha Express, Inc., Waterloo, Iowa; and Meredith Stolper of The Load and Ladle, Exeter, New Hampshire.

"Ms. Ignagni, we are not simply opportunities for profit. We are people trying to provide for our families, contribute to our local economies, and make ends meet in this recession, who believe you should look us in the eye, hear our stories, and understand what you are lobbying against," the signers write.
 

Members of the Main Street Alliance and Health Care for America now have staged several protests over the past few months at Chicago insurance offices which sometimes resulted in protester arrests.