PROVIDENCE - Twelve years ago, Pawtucket resident Ed Benson's wife, Sue, went into the hospital for a simple one-hour operation to have non-cancerous fibroids removed from her uterus.

Once the surgery began, however, the doctor discovered ovarian cancer and called for additional surgeons. The surgery stretched to six hours but was successful and the doctor prescribed four to five days of hospital recuperation for what turned out to be a major procedure.

Two days later, Benson, who was a University of Connecticut profressor at the time, got a call from his wife saying, "get down here now, I've been kicked out" of the hospital.

"I arrived on the ward to hear Sue's primary care doctor pleading with, admonishing and even yelling at an insurance executive to allow her to stay in the hospital," Benson told a protest rally Wednesday called to urge Congress to pass legislation for jobs and health care. "But all of this was to no avail."

All this happened, Benson said, despite having what he called "excellent coverage."

"Insurance company executives are making judgments both about how long we live and how we live," Benson declared. He drew the biggest cheer of all the speakers at the rally when he added, "We are demanding the choice of a public insurance plan, like Medicare, but available to Americans under 65."

The rally in Kennedy Plaza was organized by a coalition of social activist and labor groups to advocate for two jobs bills - the Put America to Work Act of 2009 and the Jobs for Main Street Act of 2010 - and the long-stalled health care reform legislation.

Dan Bass, an organizer for Ocean State Action, said the Jobs for Main Street Act would "extend unemployment benefits, extend COBRA health insurance coverage, extending Medicaid assistance and provide funding for loans to small businesses, child care assistance and job training and development funding." He said the measure has passed the House of Representatives and "we need the Senate to pass legislation that is just as strong."

Bass said both of Rhode Island's senators, Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse, support passage of the legislation.

"The country has come to a fork in the road and there are two paths we can go down," said Patrick Crowley, assistant executive director of the RI chapter of the National Education Association and co-chair of Jobs with Justice. "The path to the right is filled with broken promises and soiled tea bags. The path to the right is one of castigation and exploitation. It is the path of the demagogue and the corporate demigod."

The path in the other direction, Crowley said, "is the path that talks about creating jobs, and not just jobs at the bottom of the economic ladder. It's about jobs that are good for our community that do the things that we need, the path that has people working to build schools and rebuild neighborhoods. A path that doesn't equate the American Dream with a pyramid scheme."

Luther Allen, an unemployed Providence man, asserted that while the unemployment rate in Rhode Island is 12.9 percent, for people of color inthe state the rate is 25-40 percent.

"Unemployment is a social epidemic in our community," Allen told the crowd of about 100, many of them union members, "the simple solution is more jobs."

Allen led the assemblage in a brief chant of "Bail out the people, not the banks."

"This is disgraceful what is going on in this country right now," said AFL-CIO President George Nee. "we have the resources, we have the money, even the money that is left after the bankers and financial people stole a lot of it, to still provide a job for every single person in this community."

This being an election year, several politicians showed up for the rally, including Joseph Fernandez, a Democratic candidate for attorney general, Tom Sgouros, Democratic candidate for general treasurer, and Pawtucket Rep. Mary Duffy Messier.

Attorney General Patrick Lynch, a candidate for governor, issued a press release saying, in part, "I support Ocean State Action's efforts to get Congress to act when it comes to helping the unemployed, creating jobs, and passing meaningful health care reform. It will take action on every level of government to rebuild our economy, but real economic recovery will not occur without the action of Congress."