Rallies Held Across Nation to Condemn Medical Insurance Industry : Health care: The activists in more than 100 cities also called for government-mandated universal coverage.

Rose Hughes, a 37-year-old mother of three from Northern California stood next to the tall Equitable Insurance Co. building in the Mid-Wilshire district Thursday and tried to describe her feelings about the firm’s handling of medical claims during her son’s prolonged and costly battle with leukemia.

“This is the building, these are the people who tried to ruin our lives for seven years,” Hughes told an audience of 300 people who crowded into the insurance building’s plaza.

There were similar scenes throughout the United States on Thursday as labor unions and a variety of social action groups coordinated demonstrations in more than 100 cities condemning the insurance industry and calling for government-mandated universal health coverage.

The protests--billed as the largest collection of rallies that supporters of health-care reform have ever mustered--attempted to portray insurance companies as the major stumbling block to health care for millions of Americans.

Speakers called for a federal law that would take decisions on whether to pay for specific medical procedures out of the hands of private insurance companies.

A spokesman for the Health Insurance Assn. of America in Washington said the industry “shares concern over access to health care,” and has proposed that reforms be made at the state level to cover now-uninsured workers.

However, the industry has yet to back any of the health-care reform proposals now circulating in Congress.

A new proposal was added to the mix Wednesday when Democratic leaders in the U.S. Senate unveiled an ambitious package of legislation that would guarantee a medical service plan to all Americans. The legislation would require all employers to offer health insurance to their workers and would replace the Medicaid program for the poor with a new program called “AmeriCare,” which would be administered by the states under standards set at the federal level.

The legislation would force insurance companies to accept employees for full coverage, even if they had a record of illness. Insurance companies would have to provide a basic health package that would include hospital and physician services, diagnostic tests, limited mental health benefits, 45 days of inpatient care, 20 days of outpatient care, prenatal and well-baby care, well-child care, preventive health benefits and pap smears.

A collection of hotel, aerospace, garment and home health-care workers attended the Los Angeles rally. Organizers strung 100 feet of red cloth across the front of the Equitable building to symbolize what they described as insurance industry “red tape” that limits access to medical care.

Hughes is the head of a Northern California group that raises funds to help finance operations for children with cancer in cases in which insurance companies do not cover certain procedures or delay reimbursement.

Hughes said she fought for years with Equitable over questions of medical coverage after her son contracted leukemia in 1983. The financial strain ruined her family’s credit rating and broke up her marriage, she said.

Hughes said she sued Equitable and won a $480,000 out-of-court settlement in 1989. An Equitable spokeswoman in New York confirmed that there had been “administrative problems” in Hughes’ case and said a settlement had been reached.