Swindling our seniors: AARP shills for White House on Obamacare

The title of this article is perfect because that is exactly what is happening. Once Medicare instituted their Medicare Advantage program, AARP started losing members as seniors didn't need supplemental insurance. When Obama's friend and contributor, Barry Rand took over, AARP became the spokesman for Obamacare against the wishes of members of AARP who did not want their Medicare changed.

Incoming AARP CEO A. Barry Rand (above) contributed $8,900 to President Obama's campaign committees, federal records show.Rand, a retired senior executive at Xerox Corp., Avis Group and Equitant Inc. and the current chairman of Howard University's board of trustees, gave the maximum $4,600 to Obama's election campaign and an additional $4,300 to the Obama Victory Fund, a joint fundraising entity of Obama and the Democratic National Committee.

Now Obama wants to end the popular 'Medicare Advantage Plan' that is saving money to make seniors go back to earlier plans where AARP was a popular and needed supplemental plan which cost $190+ a month. Looks to us like AARP is getting a return on their support for Obamacare by Obama tanking Medicare Advantage Plans in order to make AARP more money once again.

How many others are going to be getting more of the American taxpayer dollars due to Obama paying back his friends like AARP.

Swindling our seniors: AARP shills for White House on Obamacare
By Lawrence Hunter
Tuesday, August 3rd 2010, 4:00 AM

For most of last year, AARP was the White House's designated huckster with lawmakers on Capitol Hill to pass comprehensive health care reform legislation and cut Medicare by $500 billion. This calculated move by AARP, which will virtually destroy the popular Medicare Advantage program, will vastly increase the demand for medigap supplemental insurance - AARP's primary insurance product.

This was a cynical and calculated move for a non-profit organization that is supposed to be advocating for the elderly - not its own business interests.
Today, Obamacare is the law of the land, and AARP has moved on to become the White House's chosen shill with older Americans, hawking Obamacare like some kind of midway carny to convince seniors that AARP and Obamacare work for them.

Despite its insistence that "We Never Stop Working for You," AARP works for the White House and on behalf of its own high-paid staff, not its members.
In turn, Obamacare works for liberal politicians and the government-corporate-nonprofit health care complex, which is composed of big government bureaucracies, labor unions, AARP, big pharma and big insurance companies. What was sold as a bold new path to universal coverage is, at least as far as AARP is concerned, a bait-and-switch snare designed to distract older people with token benefit enrichments. Meanwhile, structural changes to Medicare will ration health care, sending them out into the cold and, surely enough, to an early grave.

The best evidence of AARP's treachery toward its members was its full-throated support of Obamacare's $500 billion cuts to Medicare. According to Heritage Foundation research by Bob Moffit, "Medicare Advantage plans, which currently attract almost one in four seniors, will see enrollment cut roughly in half over the next 10 years." This despite repeated assurances by President Obama that, "No matter what you've heard, if you like your doctor or your current health care plan, you can keep it."
Far from being able to keep their current health care plan, many senior citizens will be forced to leave their Medicare Advantage plans and become more dependent on traditional Medicare. That is to say, seniors will have less generous benefit packages and fewer health care choices and will be herded into less desirable Medicare supplemental insurance plans - which, not coincidently, are the staple of AARP's billion-dollar insurance empire.

AARP's Medicare supplemental insurance products have had an increasingly difficult time competing with Medicare Advantage plans in recent years. So, in the name of "working for seniors," AARP worked with the White House to feather its own corporate nest by using the power of the federal government to destroy its Medicare Advantage competitor.

Read more: NY Post