AARP has joined the quislings of the AMA in endorsing the House version of Obamacare. It’s hard to imagine a more obvious conflict of interest. A key feature of the House bill is finishing off Medicare Advantage, a popular alternative to traditional Medicare. It will force about 10 million seniors back to traditional Medicare.
Why does that matter? Because 70% of AARP’s income comes from insurance it sells to seniors to cover expenses not paid by traditional Medicare. MA requires no such supplimental coverage, and thus it removes much of AARP’s customer base. AARP wants those 10 million victims customers back. As the Chicago Tribune puts it:
Medigap plans are a cash cow for AARP. And if people don’t need them because they can enroll in Medicare Advantage plans, that’s a revenue loss for AARP.
And it gets worse. The House bill also cuts benefits for the patients it will herd back to traditional Medicare. That makes the people who run AARP liars as well as crooks. As William Jacobson points out:
AARP previously said that it ‘will not endorse a health care reform bill that would reduce Medicare benefits’ yet … AARP is about to go back on that promise. The current house bill has hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare cuts.
So, the AARP, an organization that purports to be an advocacy group for seniors, has endorsed a piece of legislation that will do real harm to its members. Disgraceful.
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