AARP ENDORSES GREED OVER THE BEST INTERESTS OF THEIR MEMBERSHIP
The American news media has broadcast the message across the nation that the Democratic push to shove the Affordable Health Care for America Act down the throats of the American people has the full endorsement of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP), and one good example of the Democratic Party’s message is available online at “The Hill” in the article written by Jeffery Young that was published on November 5th. That article was entitled “AARP endorses House healthcare reform bill,” and it quotes the press conference statement of Barry Rand, CEO of AARP, as saying, “AARP is proud to endorse the Affordable Health Care for America Act. We urge members of the House to pass this critical bill this year so our healthcare system can work for all of us. This bill includes critical priorities for seniors – critical – ensures quality, affordable health coverage options for all Americans, provides and strengthens Medicare for today’s seniors and future generations and puts us on a path to improving our long-term health system.”
That is all well and good for Mr. Rand, but the article itself is misleading and much of what it has left out is more relevant to the issue at hand than the content written by Jeffery Young. The Affordable Health Care for America Act will cut $400 million from Medicare spending in order to help pay for the cost of the legislation’s initial implementation. That $400 million cut in Medicare spending will have a significantly adverse impact on American senior citizens, many of whom are AARP members, and it seems a wee bit odd that an organization purported to represent the interests of senior citizens would endorse a legislative act that will directly cause their members so much harm.
Inconsistencies such as this have always perked my interest and sparked the urge to research the causes behind them, however, his particular inconsistency proved to be less challenging than most and it didn’t take much work to ferret out the AARP’s justification for endorsing a legislative act that will create nothing but hardship for so many of their senior citizen members. In case your attention span is short, or you are easily bored with my rambling style of writing I will give you the short answer up front and then add the details. The AARP’s endorsement of The Affordable Health Care for America Act is motivated entirely by their own self-serving greed which has obviously overpowered the organization’s dedication to serving the best interests of the American senior citizens they have falsely sworn to faithfully represent. That is the most succinct summarization of what I have discovered and if you want the fact and the background behind that conclusion you will just have to bear with me and read on.
Jeffery Young’s brief article published in “The Hill” tells us what the AARP’s CEO had to say with respect to the AARP endorsement in the first paragraph. The remainder of the article is a liberally slanted description of a portion of opposition viewpoints presented out of context in an unflattering light, furthermore, these opposing viewpoints are presented in a manner designed to lead the reader to the conclusion that the AARP’s endorsement is somehow connected to the prior acts of those who now stand in opposition to the Democrat’s heath care reform legislation. By putting the statement’s of the opponents back into their proper context and eliminating the liberal slant of the author who is obviously an ardent supporter of all things dreamed up by the socialist leaning Democrats, it can be safely assumed that the only relevant part of Jeffery Young’s article is the first paragraph and the rest of it amounts to nothing more than trashy Democratic propaganda.
All things considered, there is more to be learned from the comment section appended to Jeffery Young’s article than there is in the article itself. At 7:14 am PST, four days following the publication of Young’s article, his “news” item had accumulated 40 comments. Of the 40 comments attributed to the article, three were somewhat vague and the author failed to make a clear statement regarding whether or not they supported or opposed the legislative proposal. Six of the comments submitted were by individuals who were obviously in favor of the Democrat’s proposed legislation, hook, line and sinker, however, none of the individuals who penned these six comments appeared to be senior citizens or members of the AARP. Thirty-one of the comments, the majority of which were made by individuals who admitted to being senior citizens, and either are current AARP members or have recently quit the organization as a direct result of AARP’s endorsement, were adamantly opposed to the Democratic Party’s proposed Affordable Health Care for America Act, and clearly expressed their outrage toward the AARP for endorsing a legislative act that will adversely impact the senior citizens who make up the organization’s membership. If you considered the 40 comments as an independent poll expressing the will of the readers, 7.5% were unsure what their position was on the legislation, 15% were in favor of the Democratic proposal for health care reform, and 77.5% were very opposed to the Democratic proposal and obviously so pissed off by the AARP’s endorsement that they have already severed their relationship with the organization or intend to not renew their membership in the future. In short, the comments appended to Jeffery Young’s article are a lot more relevant to the views of American senior citizens regarding the proposed health care reform act than Jeffery Young’s article.
The Chicago-Tribune published an article on November 5th by Grace-Marie Turner, president and founder of the Galen Institute, ( the Galen Institute is partially funded by the pharmaceutical and medical industries), with respect to the AARP’s motivation for endorsing the Democratic Party’s health care reform proposal. Grace-Marie Turner points out that the AARP takes in more than 50% of its annual budget in royalties paid to the organization by health insurance companies and other vendors who market services using the AARP name and logo. The largest percentage of the AARP’s royalties comes from health care insurers offering Medi-gap insurance plans to AARP members. Medi-gap insurance policies are insurance policies that cover the difference between what Medicare allows in payment to a health care provider for a given service and what the patient is charged for the service rendered. For many senior citizens, people who are living on a fixed income and who can ill afford to pay these additional costs, Medi-gap coverage is a necessity. The more AARP members purchasing Medi-gap insurance through AARP vendor insurance companies, the larger the royalties paid to AARP become so the organization directly benefits financially by selling these Medi-gap policies to it’s membership. However, in 2003, under the administration of George W. Bush, Medicare began offering senior citizens a new Medicare option called Medicare Advantage, and that plan eliminates the need for Medi-gap coverage. The growing popularity of Medicare Advantage has hindered the AARP’s ability to sell Medi-gap coverage and reduced the amount of royalties the AARP earns from the insurance vendor offering Medi-gap. Inasmuch as the royalties the AARP derives from the sale of Medi-gap coverage is greater than the total amount of income they receive from the accumulated annual dues of the organization’s membership, it is easy to see why the AARP is concerned about the loss of income. However, the Democratic Party, always quick to see an opportunity when one arises, offered to help the AARP out of it’s growing financial predicament by incorporating a provision in their Affordable Health Care for America Act that cuts the budget of Medicare Advantage by $150 billion. By drastically cutting the Medicare Advantage budget fewer senior citizens will be able to take advantage of this existing plan and be forced to rely on the Medi-gap coverage plan sold by the AARP affiliated insurance vendor. Ultimately this cut in the Medicare Advantage budget will not only restore the AARP’s royalties to their former level, it will significantly increase the sales of Medi-gap coverage plans as well as the royalties paid to the AARP. By cutting Medicare coverage by $400 billion and by reducing the budget of Medicare Advantage by $150 billion, the senior citizen’s need for Medi-gap coverage will be significantly increased and the AARP will reap a financial windfall as a direct result despite the hardship caused to the senior citizens the organization allegedly represents. The provision to cut $150 billion from the Medicare Advantage budget and $400 billion from Medicare will result in greater overall revenue for the AARP by increasing the amount of royalties they earn from the insurance companies affiliated with them who offer Medi-gap coverage and that increase in the AARP’s potential future revenue was the price the Democratic Party paid for the AARP endorsement.
Needless to say, if the AARP honestly represented the best interests of America’s senior citizens who make up the groups membership, the AARP would have strongly opposed the cuts in Medicare spending and the reduction of the Medicare Advantage budget. If the AARP had any sense of integrity it would have intensified its lobbying efforts against the cuts and insisted the money to finance Obamacare be found somewhere other than peeling it off the backs of this nation’s senior citizens. However, as they have aptly demonstrated, the AARP has neither the honesty nor the integrity to represent the best interests of American senior citizens when the organization stands to greatly increase its annual revenues at the direct expense of the people they purport to represent.
Clearly, the best interests of the estimated 40 million seniors that the AARP purportedly represents are not being served by the organization that has sold them out to the Democratic Party’s agenda for cramming Obamacare down the throats of the American people at any cost, and the tens of thousands of American senior citizens that have expressed their outrage at the AARP’s endorsement by cutting up their AARP membership cards, withdrawing their support, severing their AARP membership, and shredding the AARP renewal applications are a good indication that the American Association of Retired Persons can endorse Obamacare all they want, but the truth of the matter is, that the AARP endorsement was bought and paid for by the Democratic Party, and it is less an endorsement of the Democrat’s agenda than a validation of the AARP’s greed. The Democratic Party is willing to adversely add to the burden of those who can afford it the least in order to further their destructive health care legislation and increase their socialistic agenda to the detriment of this nation. The AARP endorsement is an obvious demonstration of that organization’s truly shallow depth of character because that organization has consciously chosen to succumb to the temptation of greed rather than do what is right for the best interests of their membership.
Clearly the Democratic Party’s willingness to do anything necessary to further their agenda, regardless of the dishonesty or lack of ethical considerations involved, in combination with the AARP’s blatant demonstration of self-serving greed and their willingness to sacrifice the welfare of their members to increase their own financial gain serves as a glaring beacon of warning to all American citizens regarding the proposed Affordable Health Care for America Act. Dishonesty, unethical strategies, propaganda, the dissemination of blatant lies through the liberal media, and secret deals cut behind closed door meetings are not the characteristics of proposed legislation intended by honest representatives working to benefit the American people.
As Americans, we are all intelligent enough to comprehend that, in the silence of our hearts, honesty, like truth, is always apparent. If you have the capacity to put politics and partisanship aside for one minute and listen to the voice of reason speaking from your heart instead of incessant babbling of politicians and news casters trying to convince you one way or the other, you will instantly know that we are being played as suckers by both sides of this debate. There is more going on with this health care reform fight than we are being told by either side. The “benefits” of both parties’ proposals are not intended for the American people. Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have any interest in providing the American people with anything that can be even remotely seen as beneficial in terms of increasing the quality of the health care we receive or making that health care more affordable and accessible to everyone. The blunt truth is that we the people are not being represented in this debate. The large corporations that provide medical insurance will reap most of the benefit along with their investors, organizations like the AARP will benefit by association with insurance companies who pay them royalties for the use of their name, the political party that successfully pushes their proposal through to become law will benefit by the increase in their political clout, and the myriad supporters of that political party will gain headway by that party’s success, but the American people will not benefit. In fact the American people will be made to suffer the consequences of either party’s success because both health care reform proposals will result in higher taxes and neither of the two party’s proposals guarantees lower insurance rates and better health care. As a staunch advocate for the Democratic Party or an equally staunch advocate for the Republican Party it is easy to come up with multiple justifications for supporting one side over the other but either way, it is entirely impossible to clearly indicate exactly how either proposal will benefit the American people because the fact of the matter is that they do not. As a unified whole, putting partisan politics aside and viewing the matter from the perspective of the free American people, it simply makes no sense at all to support any legislation that will further increase our tax burden, fail to reduce the high cost of health care, fail to improve the quality of our health care and provide greater financial gain to incredibly wealthy corporations, their investors and others, and do so at our expense. Inasmuch as neither political party is willing or capable of representing the best interests of the American people as a whole the most intelligent course of action for all American citizens is to enthusiastically oppose any form of health care reform legislation currently being debated in the U.S. Congress.
Our nation will not dissolve if health care legislation is not passed. The so-called “health care crisis” is a situation that has developed over a period of decades as a result of poor previous legislation and lack of law enforcement. When the professional politicians in Washington D.C. have been eliminated and replaced by people who will honestly represent the best interests of the American people instead of the best interests of the people and groups that contributed the most to their campaign funds, then it might be time to revisit the problem of health care, until that time we the people of the United States of America need to resist every legislative act proposed regardless of how dire the need or great the benefits according to what our news media reports tell us.
Sidenote:
For those interested, an alternative to the AARP exists in the American Senior’s Association. The ASA is a new association for American senior citizens and while it is not nearly as large as the AARP it does offer some of the same benefits provided by the AARP without the political backstabbing. I have not thoroughly checked out the organization since I just discovered their existence today, but since I have declined to renew my membership in the AARP this year I will probably be looking at the ASA as an alternative. In my opinion, being represented honestly by a small group is much better than being misrepresented by a large group.
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