Take me out to the ballgame and the health-care protest

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This isn’t something you see regularly outside the Metrodome: protesters singing the “Blue Cross Blue Shield Blues” and men with pompons chanting “HMOs, You U-G-L-Y.”

Members of the Universal Health Care Action Network-Minnesota gathered Sunday before a Twins game in Minneapolis to call attention to their “Single Payer Med Care” effort. They are the same group that protests at the annual meeting of Minnetonka-based UnitedHealth Care.

Kari Sprung posted her videos of the event on YouTube. Singing and strumming the “Blue Cross Blue Shield Blues” is Joel Albers, a pharmacist, health economist and UHCAN leader. Check out the ugly HMO cheer here. 

One member posted his take on a UHCAN message group: “In some ways it was discouraging, singing and cheering, and trying to talk, to a sea of mostly uninterested baseball fans. But we had our moments. There was some pretty good camera footage of the protest. Let’s share our pictures and use them to further the awareness. Gotta keep demanding what we want (Single Payer) so that Congress and its insurance corporation sponsors aren’t able to compromise the public option down to nothing.”