September 21, 2012 - 11:34 am
GOP vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan spoke to the AARP convention this afternoon. Rather than tell the audience what it may have wanted to hear, Ryan told them that the best way to strengthen Medicare is to repeal ObamaCare.
Boos ensued.
But keep watching. Some in the audience seem to come around once he explained how ObamaCare has committed felony theft against Medicare.
The allegedly non-partisan AARP supported ObamaCare despite the fact that a majority of its members reportedly opposed that law’s passage.
The AARP’s politicization has helped the rise of Generation America, a conservative alternative.
Good for him. Here’s hoping some of the retirees are not so sodden on government cheese that they actually listen to him.
AARP is largely a marketing scheme for various products and services to seniors. Those tie-ins and endorsements for insurance, home meds, hearing aids, etc. is what brings in the revenue. Attached to it is an ineffective lobbying outfit that doesn’t really represent seniors or even its membership. Its focus is on a general left-liberal agenda, rather than issues concerning its putative constituency. (Much like the ABA.) It has almost no pull outside of the media.
Its lobbying effort was quite effective in framing features of Obamacare to create marketing opportunities for AARP insurance products, against the best interests of its membership.
That’s where their leverage with the media paid off. AARP ran interference with the media for the Dems on seniors objections to Obamacare’s cuts to Medicare.
And what did it get in return? Obamacare nearly killed Medicare Advantage, a popular alternative among seniors, that had crowded out of the marketplace the supplemental insurance AARP used to offer and may hope to offer again. That program was a cash cow for AARP and they’d like it back.
AARP made this lobbying effort for a cut of the economic pie, for itself not its constituents. The cuts to Medicare reimbursements it always thought it could finesse through a doc fix. And the IPAB, who cares? It will just drive more seniors to supplemental coverage.
But the IPAB is now very unpopular among seniors. And the doc fix never happened. All of a sudden, AARP has grown very quiet about its support for O-care.
By the way, I think Ryan becomes more persuasive when faced with an adverse audience, rather than a receptive one. He slows down his speaking, hits his points hard and direct, seems calmer and more determined and yet remains likable.
– years ago when I was just 48. Never will join.
I’m 55 and refuse to ever join AARP. They’re primarily an insurance company that sells overpriced products to seniors while claiming to be an advocacy group. They’ve opposed every attempt to reform Social Security and Medicare that would actually have a chance of working. They remind me of Grandpa on “The Simpsons”, “I’m old. Gimme, gimme, gimme.”
I have adult stepsons and four young grandchildren. I hope for a future for them where they aren’t crippled by debt and taxes to support entitlement programs. AARP is opposed to that, so I’m opposed to them. Screw them and the lobbiests they rode in on.
If AARP is a tax-exempt senior advocacy organization, why isn’t AFLAC a tax-exempt duck advocacy organization, or GEICO a tax-exempt lizard (or Neanderthal) advocacy organization?
I send everything back to them with a little love note telling them where to go. As everything they send has a SASE included, you can attach it to something heavy, take it to the post office and it will be delivered back to the AARP. Bricks and concrete blocks work nicely. Cheers -