Over the last three decades, AARP has gone from a nonpartisan non-profit advocate for Seniors to becoming an appendage of the Democratic Party.
AARP endorsed ObamaCare, telling Seniors they were doing so because of the spiraling prescription drug costs, discriminatory practices by insurance companies and a Medicare system “awash in fraud, waste and abuse.” A move that most Seniors believed would provide them protection. NOT SO!
Standing in sharp contrast to AARP’s claims that ObamaCare will “make the health care system work for more Americans,” a 2010 Medicare Trustees report said that by 2016, 90% of seniors who currently have retiree prescription drug coverage offered by their former employer, or would have participated in the future, will no longer be able to enroll in such coverage as a result of changes made by the Democrats’ health care law. The CBO estimated that Medicare Part D plan premiums will increase by 9% as a direct result of ObamaCare.
ObamaCare also cuts Medicare Advantage by $206 billion between 2010 and 2019, a move that could eventually effect between 6 to 7 million Seniors, making AARP a handsome profit in royalty payments from United’s Medigap policy sales. It is interesting to note that once ObamaCare passed, United signed a new contract with AARP through 2017, paying royalties of 4.95% of senior’s premiums for every Medigap policy sold, an increase of almost one percent over their previous contract. Additional Medigap policy royalties of anywhere from $55 million to $166 million would significantly increase AARP’s bottom line.
During the debate over health care reform, AARP used its substantial financial resources and public image as a senior advocacy organization to significantly shape the final health care law to the detriment of seniors. [In 2012, the Wall Street Journal unmasked the AARP as a propaganda machine for ObamaCare by publishing numerous emails between high-ranking AARP officials and the White House.]
ObamaCare was not the first time AARP decided to support legislation that would have cut Medicare to fund another entitlement program. In 2007, AARP issued a press release saying it “commends [the] House for passing the CHAMP Act.” The Children’s Health and Medicare Protection Act of 2007 offered cuts to Medicare of $202.8 billion in order to fund a $128.7 billion expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). The CHAMP Act also cut Medicare Advantage by $157 billion which the non-partisan Medicare Payment Advisory Commission predicted would have left one-in-five seniors without access to Medicare Advantage.
In their commitment to liberal activism, AARP was also instrumental in helping defeat President Bush’s Social Security Reform Plan that would have allowed workers to divert some of their payroll taxes to private retirement accounts despite the fact that the phony Social Security Trust Fund is broke and today’s workers will more than likely never see a dime of the money they’ve paid into the system.
AARP pursues its political agenda on the taxpayer’s dime. Their 2004 annual report showed that of the $878 million in revenue received that year $83 million came from the federal government through a variety of grants. Charlie Jarvis, Chairman and CEO of USA Next, estimates that from 1989 through 2004, “AARP appears to have taken over a billion dollars in taxpayer money in the form of federal grants” from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the IRS, the Department of Labor, Health and Human Services, and the Justice Department. Dale Van Atta, a journalist who has investigated AARP’s dubious claims to nonprofit status, says AARP is “really a Fortune 500 company that sidelines as a lobbying organization for the Washington staff.”
You can read “Behind the Veil” in its entirety at this link.
AARP is not a group that is looking out for the interests of retirees. It’s an organization that while promoting socialism, is lining their own pockets.
