AARP Gets Payoff from Obama

[John Lefoot]

AARP Gets Payoff from Obama
(Are you really surprised?)

Obama Administration Exempts AARP's Medigap Insurance Policies from Rate Review and Premium Restrictions Imposed on Other Health Policies under ObamaCare

Another shoe falls, another piece of the puzzles drops into place, another peek at AARP's payoff for endorsing ObamaCare comes into focus. While other health policies must go through a rigorous rate review under ObamaCare and justify any premium increases of more than 10 percent, AARP's Medigap policies are to be exempt from the federal review and restriction.

AARP disguises its insurance profit as "non-profit royalties" and therefore already receives preferential tax treatment as a result—the company pays no federal income tax on its insurance income.

AARP also is exempt from other ObamaCare regulations, such as a restriction on insurance-industry executive pay and a tax on insurance companies.

Remember how AARP stunned the world last year when it betrayed seniors, endorsed ObamaCare and threw its enormous political clout behind the lobbying campaign to enact the bill into law? Those of us now with the Alliance said then and we have said all along that AARP's betrayal was financially motivated, pure and simple. Now the scope of the betrayal and the nature of the payoff are coming into sharp focus. AARP feathered its own corporate nest at the expense of its members.



The AARP sellout and payoff worked this way:

AARP sold its endorsement of ObamaCare to the Obama Administration the same way it routinely sells its single-product endorsement to a big insurance company.
In exchange for its endorsement and lobbying effort, AARP received preferential treatment for its insurance products and a guarantee that the popular Medicare Advantage Insurance product, which competes with AARP's Medigap policies, would be slated for extinction under the law.
Meanwhile, AARP's own Medigap insurance products and executives, who act as an out-sourced mouthpiece for their single-endorsed products, would receive privileged treatment, and AARP, the company, would be exempt from any new federal taxation on its insurance operations.
ObamaCare isn't even implemented yet, and already Medicare Advantage providers are succumbing to the regulatory pressure and closing down operations. Earlier this year, for example, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care notified customers that it will drop its Medicare Advantage health insurance program at the end of 2010, which will force 22,000 senior citizens in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine to seek alternative supplemental coverage—you guessed it, AARP-style Medigap policies.

According to a Wall Street Journal report, the number of senior citizens expected to lose their private, fee-for-service-Medicare Advantage plans will balloon to three-quarters of a million seniors next year when insurance companies drop the plans as a direct result of the more stringent federal requirements on Medicare Advantage plans under ObamaCare.



Leaders of the new Republican-controlled House of Representatives insist they will pass a bill to repeal ObamaCare. But, everyone knows that bill will never be enacted into law because it will die in the Democratically controlled Senate. Even if by some miracle it were to pass the Senate, President Obama would veto it.

Therefore, the 112th Congress will quickly turn into a mud-wrestling contest between congressional opponents of ObamaCare and the Obama Administration. While congressional Republicans are making noise and hitting ObamaCare with a series of limited pin-prick attacks, ObamaCare bureaucrats will be busy trying to sink regulatory roots deep into the American health care system that cannot easily be up rooted. Meanwhile, AARP will continue seeking and receiving its payoff in the form of preferential treatment from this regulatory weed infestation.

And do you know what you hear from AARP when they are pressed by journalists and activists to respond to this cronyism and special privilege from friends in high places? SILENCE.

For a company that made so much noise when lobbying for ObamaCare AARP is conspicuously silent when asked to explain the payoff they are receiving at seniors' and boomers' expense.

We the Alliane don't diminish the efforts by Congressional opponents of ObamaCare to thwart ObamaCare's implementation by using hit-and-run tactics to delay and defund critical components of ObamaCare. It is just that on their own, these efforts are overmatched and outclassed by the Obama bureaucratic Behemoth doing the heavy lifting of erecting the ObamaCare superstructure.

Unless opponents of ObamaCare organize and strategize effectively, the bureaucratic Behemoth will steamroller over the opposition, and ObamaCare will become too entrenched during the next two years to be up rooted even by a new president opposed to it.

That is why even with the new Republican majority in the House committed to repealing ObamaCare, it will require a grass-roots uprising of mammoth proportions to bring the bureaucratic steam roller to a halt. It will require constant grass roots action in the halls of Congress, in the mail, on the telephone, over the Internet and in town hall gatherings.



Stopping ObamaCare also will require determined efforts in the courts to overturn ObamaCare as unconstitutional. A good start toward that end was achieved in the recent federal District Court ruling in Virginia. However, even though that ruling struck down as unconstitutional ObamaCare's individual mandate, which requires people to purchase health insurance, it did not strike down the law. Which means without an even more aggressive and convincing legal challenge, the bureaucrats will repair the damage done by the courts, and the ObamaCare bureaucrts will strangle our health care system.

That is why we need you to join the Alliance for Retirement Prosperity right now. When AARP speaks, Congress listens because the marketing gurus at AARP have propagated a phantasmagoria of myth and disinformation—they have convinced Members of Congress that AARP speaks for seniors and baby boomers. AARP does not speak for the vast majority of American boomers and seniors; AARP speaks for itself, and its actions are calculated to benefit the organization's executives and the company's bottom line.

The only way to dispel this myth and free our leaders from AARP's hypnotic spell is to shake them awake by millions of seniors and baby boomers just like you raising their voice in protest and opposition. When seniors and boomers put boots into the halls of Congress, burn up their telephone and fax lines, overflow their email boxes and town hall meetings, then Members of Congress will listen—and only then will Members of Congress find the wherewithal to stop the ObamaCare steamroller.

If you want to belong to an effective organization that speaks for you, shares your values and is an effective force in the political arena to protect your interests and enact your agenda, Join the Alliance, Right Now. Don't Delay.