TIME GOES BY | Gray Matters: AARP

Image by pmuellr via Flickr

by Saul Friedman

I think it’s time to call a truce in the long feud that many of us and I have been waging against AARP.

Why now? Well, AARP must be doing something right when Senator John McCain (R. Arizona), who would deny Americans the tax-payer supported health insurance coverage that he has enjoyed all his life, vowed to “fight with every fiber of my being” the proposed health reforms now before the Senate and he asked members to tear up their AARP membership cards.

Also, a group of House Republicans who have been hostile to Medicare and had no intention of supporting any real reform, sent letters to AARP accusing it of “putting political self-interests ahead of seniors” in supporting the reform bill passed by the House.

AARP rejected the complaint and, I would add, better “political self-interests” than financial. For these Republicans had no problem with AARP in 2003 when to the dismay of many members, it helped the Bush administration pass in a midnight session, over the objection of nearly every Democrat, the misnamed Medicare Part D drug bill, which among other things, hobbled Medicare, gave billions in subsidies to insurers and enriched the drug and insurance companies – and AARP.
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