BE A BILLIONAIRE

We have always preferred to wield our influence from back rooms at the Capitol or the back nine at the club. Nonetheless, Billionaires for Wealthcare must make public appearances — as Billionaires — if we want to maintain the right to profit from illness.

To become a Billionaire, we ask only that you follow the simple instructions below on how to choose a name, dress the part, and adopt a Billionaire persona. Once you have completed these preliminaries, you and other like-minded Billionaires are ready to stage events and, if you like, form your own chapter of Billionaires for Wealthcare.

Where?

Billionaires can be useful at both pro- and anti-health reform events.  By “counterprotesting” reformers, we help get their message out. And at Teabagger’s own events, we show up and thank them for fighting so hard to protect OUR right to deny THEIR claims.

See our “Tips for a Successful Action” for more tips and tactics

With Who?

Connect with other Billionaires in your area using our Chapters page.  Don’t see a yacht club in your neck of the gated community? Use our comment section at to announce yourself.

You can also visit our Facebook page to find actions, events and other billionaires near you.

How?
Image is everything. Wearing suitable attire is a fundamental element of how we communicate. Billionaires should dress to oppress; those who want to participate but are not appropriately dressed can act as foils from the opposing side. For tips on what to wear, please review the section on Billionaire attire (below).

Remember, we make a bigger and more powerful impression when we appear unified and dignified.

Stay together as a group, remaining distinct and separate from non-Billionaires. Our impact is lessened when ordinary protesters, all ratty in blue jeans and backpacks, try to mingle with us.

The medium Is the message, and we own the medium.  We get our message across most effectively with clean, professional-looking signage, but expensive-looking doesn’t have to be expensive. We’ve included several reproducible placards on this website; have your staff print them out for you.  Remember: while it is perfectly appropriate to have illuminated manuscripts of our stock portfolios painstakingly painted by children in sweatshops, hand-lettered signs have no place at our events. Of course, a little gold embossment around the edges provides a tasteful je ne sais quoi.

Whose Media? Our Media!

Be prepared to give a brief, witty, complete statement to the media.

Make use of our chants, songs, one-liners and talking points, and make sure you can be heard.

For more tools and tips on a successful event, check out our Media Tips page.

As a billionaire, you must make a good name for yourself (or at least borrow one from your parents). Here are some famous Billionaire names from around the country:

  • Bill M. Moore
  • Billie O’Nair
  • Frida Market
  • Lou Pole
  • Phil T. Rich
  • Z. Roe Compassion
  • Dee Regulation

tj

Appearances are everything. Formal dress is required.

We know that there is a great wealth of diversity among the extremely rich — and therefore among our fashion choices as well. Billionaires come in all colors, shapes and sizes. We have old money and oil money and dot-com money and money at work and money on vacation and daytime money and evening money.

But as important as it is to honor the diversity of our ranks, it is even more important to preserve the traditional image of the Billionaire in America.

It has occasionally come to our attention that some Billionaires have tried to gather in casual garb, and to those deviant individualists, we have only this to say: Formal is Normal.  Is is not only crucial to sport the right attitude, but to sport the right suit and shoes as well.

So dress to oppress and hit the streets!

For men, suit-able attire includes:
• black tux or suit, white shirt and dress shoes.  Optional accessories: money tie, bowtie, bowler hat, cigar, monocle, white gloves, cummerbund, suspenders, cane. Also acceptable: crisp white pants, polo shirt, blazer, ascot and yachtsman’s cap.

For women:
• floor or knee-length gown, pearls, fancy scarf and heels. Optional Accessories: furs, diamonds, opera gloves, cigarette holder, tiara. Also acceptable: insurance exec business suit and heels or yachting attire.

Absolutely no jeans, tshirts, sneakers or workboots, fun as it might be to imagine what it’s like to actually work for a living.

Below are some chants, talking points and other useful stuff . For best results, when drafting talking points for an action, strive for brevity, humor and specific content which shows why only wealthy people should be supporting America’s for-profit healthcare system.

CHANTS:

(Click here for PDF version)

Regular:

Bring Back Bush!
Hey Hey, Ho Ho, Keep the Profits with the CEOs
You say health gap, I say wealth gap.
Stock options, yes! Public Option, no!
Your pain, our gain.
Walk. It. Off.
Wealthcare, Not Healthcare!
Fear, Lies, Sedition! Pre-Existing-Condition!

Making fun of Tea-Partiers:

Ang-ry Yell! Ang-ry Yell!
We are louder! We are louder!
What are we saying? Rrrrrrr!
How do we say it? LOUD!
Do we know what we’re saying, Noooooo!
What are we mad about? Stuff!”
If the facts do not equate, just lie and obfuscate!

ONE-LINERS:

  • What health care problem? I feel just fine.
  • Let them eat Advil.
  • Whatever happened to an apple a day?
  • Band-Aids are affordable.
  • Nothing Says “Freedom” Like Denying Claims
  • Don’t Tread My Freedom to Deny Your Claim
  • Don’t Blame Me for Your Pre-Existing Condition
  • Skyrocketing Premiums: What’s Not to Like?
  • Your fight is not with us, it’s for us. (to the teabaggers)
  • Ask not what your healthcare corporation can do for you…but what you can do for your healthcare corporation
  • For the past 8 years, health care costs have been moving in the right direction…Up!
  • Nobody’s forcing you to get sick, you know.
  • Support Our Troops: Stop Giving Them Socialized Medicine! (thru the VA)
  • Fight Socialism! Take Away VA Benefits from our Troops Now!
  • Fight Socialism! End Medicare Now!
  • Who needs infrastructure?
  • Your premiums may have doubled, but our salaries have tripled!
  • The system works great — for the insurance industry!
  • Keeping our profits healthy will require some sacrifice. Not on our part, of course.
  • You deserve the healthcare you can afford
  • Private Insurance works just fine
  • Walk it off.
  • Wealth before health. (used a la “age before beauty”)
  • We’re just like you — minus a few billion dollars and a butler or two. (to teabaggers)

TALKING POINTS:

(Click here for PDF version)

General

People keep saying that insurance companies don’t like sick people, which is totally false.  Sick people are fine, they don’t cost us anything – it’s being forced to CARE for sick people that the problem

Don’t give the government your money! We are happy to keep gouging you instead.

We like the current system: we get to insure the healthy and offload the sick to taxpayers.

How so? When any one of the 47 million uninsured Americans need care they go to the emergency room – at 5 times the cost of a doctor’s visit! – Taxpayers are already footing that bill nice and quietly everyday.  And hospitals get to charge full market rates while we only insure wealthy, healthy customers.  It’s a win-win! Well, maybe not for taxpayers…

Some people say the healthcare system is broken. But it works for us. Just like Congress.

Healthcare is a commodity, not a right.

You want insurance AND a house?!  And you call ME greedy?

You think you pay a lot for healthcare? For every congressman, I’ve got six lobbyists on my payroll. And they don’t come cheap! Especially when all SEVEN of them have their hands out!.

Public Option

Medicare is 10 times more efficient than private insurance. They don’t have to do any marketing, only 3% of their costs are paperwork, and they don’t pay out huge CEO salaries. The public option will just be more of the same. Where is the profit in that?”

We don’t mind competing with the government — on the golf course. Matter of fact, I just took Max Baucus out for a game just last week.

Pre-existing Conditions

We’re happy to accept people with pre-existing conditions: health, wealth, and youth.

Denying Claims

We deny more claims before 8am than Medicare does all day.

Because nothing says “freedom” like denying claims.

We believe in a free market.  We should be free to deny coverage at will.

Recision

Our death panels turn a profit. We dump customers from our rolls when they become too sick to cover.  In fact our quota system makes sure of it.  Just last year three of our health care insurance companies made $300 million just by kicking out 20K customers!

SONGS:

Click here to see the songs page

Posted on | September 6, 2009 | Comments

Comments

  • David
    Well, all I can say is that it warms my heart to finally see someone stepping forward to express their sympathy, pity, and understanding of the most down-trodden people in the world: billionaires who desperately long to be trillionaires. For too long, oh Lord, have we billionaires been the subject of the scorn and derision of the poor, who loll about and starve to death while they give vent to their cruel dislike for us as we drive by in our limos. For too long, oh Lord, have we suffered the slings and arrows of their outrageous attitudes as we have our drivers stop our limos so our bodyguards can steal the poor people's shoes and last few grains of rice! For too long, oh Lord, have we, the pitiable hyper-wealthy, struggled to darken the skies with pollution from our factories, only to have those ingrates try to clean up the air that we have so laboriously dirtied! For too long, oh dear Lord, have we, the cancerous corporate overlords, caused deformity, sickness, and death among the general populace with our drugs (both illegal and pharmaceutical), and our junk food, only to have a significant portion of the beneficiaries of our heart-felt largesse refuse our offerings and resort to the irrational, totally unfair (and dare I say it?) illegal tactic of growing their own food and herbs! When oh when, oh Lord, will my people- the hyper-wealthy corporate robber barons- be once again free to roam this land free of all legal constraints upon our rapacity? I have BEEN to the mountain, and from that great vantage point I have closed my eyes, grunted, and CRAPPED upon the little people, and how do they show their gratitude for my generous expression of trickle-down Reagonomics? I just can't go on, the pain is too great. James, start the limo, I want to go run over some poor people.
  • cdtien
    I wrote some chants. tell me what you think.

    We buy poitician for you so you sleep better! ( to tea baggers)
    Golden years are ONLY for Billionaires!
    Tax payer shall alway paying for us!( to tea baggers)
    No Bill! Joe average is bankrupting America, No Bill! ( to tea baggers)
    The constitution is for the healthy and the wealthy! ( to tea baggers)
    Oxford incorporated for president.
    Getting sick and die is the American way! Unless you have a trust fund ( to tea baggers)
    Real Americans get rich they don’t get sick.
  • freedom
    wat will health insurance do if "" WE THE PEOPLE"" take control over?!?!
  • Jerome K
    Does anybody know whats happening with the Vancouver Olympics?
  • monetoliverdeplace
    Downhill skiing and the bobsled, for sure.
  • Greg
    I was recently laid off by Verizon in an act of pure corporate greed. Just take a look at what their profits were this year. Yet, they laid off 8000 in 2008, another 8000 in 2009, and will continue laying off in 2010. Not because in they are in the most remote danger of going under, but because they are not making as much profit as they would like in order to afford themselves the lifestyle to which they have become accustomed. However, they don't give a moment's notice to the lives being destroyed under their corporate wheels in order to allow them their luxuries. What can one individual do to combat the huge, rich, corporate entities which control the economic status of this country? How are we EVER going to dig our way out of this gigantic economic cluster***k????
  • Greg
    Get off your fat, lazy, american asses and get some EXCERSIZE!! Stop being a nation of spectators who support the multi-million dollar salaries of sports superstars who allow you to live your lives by proxy and GET IN THE GAME!! Let's BE a naton of 'WE', not 'ME'!!! How much health care could be paid for with the combined salaries of our sports 'heroes', and how much do THEY pay for their health care??
  • darleneA
    My children are stolen from me, by their Arab father and his girlfriends here in the States. They not only stole my children, but they stole my lucretive business deal. I had gone to then, Sen. Biden, seeking $1,000,000 seed funding, and he was going to help me. However, Fares Almalik and his girlfriends stole my project from me, and stole subsequent projects from me. The FBI is helping them, to steal my children nad my projects, as are members of Interpol. Det. John Buchard found my children, but they got rid of him, closed my case, and hid my children.
    I need help in getting justice, as Fares Almalik, and some from his family, as well as some from our government are shutting me down. My life and the lives of my children have been put in jeopardy. They are blocking my son, and destroying his marriage and his life, to destroy me. I was the Arab's friend, but they betrayed me, and are stealing my life from me. I want my story told. Please contact me.
    I have several children with Fares Almalik of which all have been stolen from me. Please contact me so that I can get my story told, and get my children back.
    They have been plotting and scheming against my life, with the help of some of the FBI, and other agencies. My life is not safe. They have falisified my background, and put backgrounds of those who had been in jail, on my background to make people not want to help me. The FBI is trying to smear my reputation to get away with what they are doing. They not only stole my children, but they stole my lucretive billion dollar project, which was a teak project of ten miles, along with land that contained gold and needed to be mined.
    They wanted the money, and they stole my projects from me for either a portion of it, or huge payoffs. They stole my children for the hush money, and to be paid off all during my children's lives, to keep their whereabouts a secret, and to keep the fact that I have children a secret. They do not believe that there is a God, who is going to punish them for all they have done to me and to my children. The FBI and others from the various agencies, got dirty money to steal my children and to keep them hidden. So, they destroyed the lives of my children, so that they can go home to their children with a fistfull of dollars at the expense of the lives of my children. Please help me to save my children from the whores Fares has them with. His women burglarized my home, ran on their husbands, some left their husbands to be paid by Fares for my children. He and his women have been burglarizng my home and stealing everything from me, with the help of the FBI.
    Please help me.
  • RichRDaily
    "What I know is right"? What do you know is right? I worked for WellPoint, Blue Cross and Kaiser. I sent out letters of denial for services every day, to customers who never missed a payment. When they became too expensive to make a profit from, my company dropped them. I filed the letters of appeal from cancer patients, patients with detached retinas who had to pay out of their own pocked to save what vision was left to them with cold fusion therapy. The worst was when I overheard two medical reviewers deny an applicant for insurance... because she was pregnant.
    Please tell me how the present system is better than what we have now. Try working for an insurance company for a month and see if you can keep the same attitude, when you hear the sales reps gloat about their bonuses, have screaming fights with other reps for not charging enough to make them their bonus, then spend the rest of the day
    listening to the managers find excuses to drop inconvenient patients....
  • troylynn
    We love you Billionaires! This is getting better and better with you on our side.

    FILL THE POCKETS OF THE GREEDY INSURANCE COMPANIES! (where's my tierra?)
  • glennznyc
    Calling ALL BILLIONAIRES and wanna be Billionaires... Moveon dot Org is having a "DIE IN" in front of the NY Times building on Monday, Nov. 2nd at Noon. We need people to represent "the Dead" and we want to bring a bit of levity to the message and at the same time respect those who are have died or will die b/c they don't have insurance and we lack a Public Option... I am including the link for the event in NYC - note, MoveOn is doing events nationwide, plug in your zip code and if one is happening in your area, sign up! Thank you! Glenn (let them eat Advil...)
  • glennznyc
    here's the link to sign up http semi colon //pol dot moveon dot org/event/events/event.html?event_id=99241
  • Make me a billionaire. Only my position of wisdom can identify the wretched, suck-up off the rich and give to the poor. I'm a modern day Robin Hood, without the 'hood' part.
    With the billlion I'll get, I propose amazing changes that will inspire so many to join me on a crusade against corruption, and will work toward getting good hard working people back on their feet, give back to the needy and invest in a growing energy industry that will compete with the oil corporations...
  • JC Williams
    Billionaires ROCK and they do Broadway too! Thank you, and you sing most excellently so you don't need to keep your day jobs. Oh sorry, billionaires don't have jobs, do they.
  • Imawell_T_Chick
    Sorry to post twice--but anyone in the central or southern Indiana: I will travel if needed. Maybe we can go to a senator's or congressman's office?
  • Imawell_T_Chick
    I'm near Bloomington, Indiana. Would like to connect with other present and potential billionaires.
  • Kelsy
    I am in Omaha, NE, and would love to be a billionaire. My husband and I would be down for it. He even has the Monopoly-man mustache going on. AND he's southern, so I mean that'd be a great act.
  • Beverly Hillz
    I'm in Houston and would be up for organizing.
  • bobbiereinecker
    I would love to be in this group! I live in Katy, west of Houston. MUCH more fun than Red Hats.
  • Bill D Poore
    I'm in New Orleans, home of the offices of Mary Landrieu (on the fence but could go for reform) and David Vitter (Teabagger, prostitution connoisseur, professional bigot). I have a Billionaire costume ready, and I just need compatriots with ideas. Drop me a line some time if you're in town and feel like having some fun.
  • Bill D Poore
    I'm in New Orleans, home of the offices of Mary Landrieu (on the fence but could go for reform) and David Vitter (Teabagger, prostitution connoisseur, professional bigot). I have a Billionaire costume ready, and I just need compatriots with ideas. Drop me a line some time if you're in town and feel like having some fun.
  • FRED J ABRAHAMS
    Dear B4W,

    When will you have a press conference to announce achievement awards for the loyal advertisers who support the good works of FOX.

    The nominees should include all the AHIP members, all car makers, P&G, Kraft, etc.
    Pointing out the contribution made by these public spirited firm to the welfare of this fine news organization the public should be urged to support them with the purchase of their advertised products.

    You are clearly in tune with the needs of the oft maligned companies that add so much to the gross national product by their redistribution of wealth to the deserving top 1% of the economy.

    FRED J ABRAHAMS
    Brattleboro, VT
  • Screw U Peasant
    I love the billionaires.. we rock!
  • Ironically I can look like I'm wearing something actually way more expensive than a ballroom costume, like above. :-(

    I mean I AM in debt due to my love of bags, but it led me to my dream/building career.

    I'm silly, but why so ballroomy and not including stuff that resembles designer? (Or actual designer for those silly shopaholics who've punished/rewarded themselves to be even poorer.)
  • So merely dressing like a celebrity with an "Hermes" "Birkin" not enough?

    (With perhaps a nice knee-length skirt, sunglasses, etc.)

    I do not believe floor-length looks good on my short yet widish body and have no money to buy a new skirt.
  • More Moolah
    I love the signs, especially "Billionaires for Wealthcare." T-shirts and bumperstickers would be great, too. I could put a bumpersticker on my Rolls and wear the t-shirt whilst "roughing it" on the yacht
  • sasha
    Are there any Billionaires in Knoxville TN?
  • April
    I am in Costa Mesa, CA, and am starting a chapter for cronies in Orange county- so darlings please contact me at ablackman2000@aol.com.

    Kiss,kiss!
  • Count Ivan Titallubitch
    I vant to inwite all of my fellow billionairesforweathcare to a very exclusive Wodka tasting in S. Oregon, to coincyde with my good friend Rollin N. Doe and his brother Holden D. and their two sons Rollin 2 and Holden 2's very very exclusive cognac tasting. Only the snootiest need R. S. V. P., the rest may watch from a satisfactory distance.
  • barracuda78
    must be the surgeons won't be as rich, at least that's what they think...is that why they became a surgeon...because they might have alot of money...

    I had a surgeon try to talk me into surgery when it wasn't needed

    I work in the medical field too, and know that when someone has good health insurance you will try everything to get them in on a regular basis...
  • BFWC is the most brilliant thing since the 2008 elections.
  • Alpha Proffat
    I got a good name, I got a mink stole... Too bad I mislaid my calfskin elbow-length gloves and the dress I wore to my niece's debutante ball 20-or-so years ago won't fit any more. And that the nearest chapter (Norfolk, VA) is 4 hours away (and I had to sack the chauffeur, 'cause he demanded -- wouldn't you know it -- health insurance)
  • Mid Age Man
    My wife and I are surgical technician and scrub nurse...

    ...you make fun of what we know everyday is right.

    Have your jolly good time now, because if this bill passes many of the surgeons we are hearing during cases are quietly planning to take early retirement.

    Remember that in 10 years when you can't find someone to do your heart surgery or take out your gall bladder. Your efforts are making a difference. I hope for America that the right decision gets made.

    Good luck to you...
    M
  • Patricia
    ooops... thought I posted my thanks and admiration here...must have been another site where the video was posted.

    Whoever started this...YOU ROCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • Patricia
    pardon my ignorance, but Jae, what does the DFW mean in your post re new fb group?
    (not sure i want to know!)
  • Jae
    We've made a facebook group to help gather the DFW Billionaires.
  • Brian
    You guys rock! Are there any Billionaires in Chicago? If so, I'd like to get involved. Thanks!
  • Excellent!
    ---------------------------------------
  • ines
    question: I have a real mink stole - i don't want to offend anyone (peta, etc.) - personally i hate fur - got it when my mom passed and i can't seem to get rid of it - do you think it will piss people off? thanks for any advice
  • Jeff
    Use It You don't have to tell anyone it's real; but it will add an air of authenticity to your act. Since being an act you aren't actually for any thing you're saying or wearing! Just like anouther great satirist Steven Colbert once said, "It adds to the confusion and makes for a better act." Also the heirloom that you own is an artifact that an animal gave its life for by wearing it in SATIRE you honor its' beauty without sullying its memory.Ironicly by wearing the fur as farce you are actully protesting anyone who might do the same. Just don't wear it anywhere else and when your done donate it to a museum or antique clothier remember an animals life and beauty are remembered are historic to that garment. enjoy bouth your mothers memory and the creatures magnificence you'll do it no shame so long as you donate it when your done!

    If no museum or clothier is avalable may be a theatre or reinactment group could benefit from your thoughtful donation.
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