Why SIPC protection means nothing for the individual retail investor if brokers go bankrupt

When Lehman brothers went bankrupt, they did not allow the accountholders to transfer their accounts to another broker. They instead filed for bankruptcy and every retail individual investor like us (who are not banks or financial institutions) and thus not secured creditors, received only 41 cents on the dollar. So if Charles Schwab or Interactive Brokers were to go bankrupt, don't for a minute think that they will allpw us to transfer our accounts to another broker. They too will file for bankrupty and trap us. We too will only get some cents on the dollar since the financial institutions will extract all their money first and then the leftover will be distributed to us individual investors. SIPC protection is useless.