The Medicare drug bill would never have passed without the support of AARP. Progressives of all stripes—as well as most AARP members—were shocked, shocked I tell you, when the country’s largest senior-citizen lobbyist threw its collective weight behind the Republican-sponsored legislation. It didn’t take a rocket scientist (or an insurance actuary) to sort through the spin and figure out that the bill was a giant step toward fulfilling the Republican wet-dream of privatized Medicare and that millions of citizens would lose employer- and state-run benefits.
I mean, dating back to my Grandma’s membership days, AARP if not a progressive force, at least always leaned in the right direction on healthcare issues.
My wife and I let our membership in the organization lapse, thinking the reason behind AARP’s startling move was pure greed: AARP, after all, started as an insurance business in 1958 (which explains the organization’s initial opposition to Medicare), and still turns a tidy profit—about 24% of operating revenue in 2002—selling health insurance. Turns out we were wrong. The turning of AARP was a long time coming, according to Barbara Dreyfuss’s “The Seduction: The shocking story of how AARP backed the Medicare bill,” published earlier this month in The American Prospect.
“To those few who were really watching closely, however, AARP’s actions were not a surprise at all, and the group’s conversion was anything but sudden. The story of the Republicans’ seduction of AARP unfolded over nearly a decade, as GOP leaders cajoled, seduced, and occasionally threatened the group’s leaders into changing their ways and accepting the reality of Republican congressional control. Today, with bad policy already law, the stakes are incredibly high, as regulations to implement the law loom, along with bills to repeal some of its worst aspects. And they will grow higher still if President Bush is re-elected and Republicans can continue toward their ultimate goals. As the battle to preserve Medicare unfolds, Democrats who were surprised by the bill’s passage last November should understand a key part of the story, which has not been told, of how it happened.”
According to Dreyfuss, former House speaker Newt Gringrich spent the last decade shepherding the AARP into the Republican camp by socially engineering his friend Bill Novelli, who became AARP’s executive director in June 2001. Novelli, quickly realizing which side of his bread was buttered, centralized AARP’s policy making activities in the hands of a coterie of corporate aides-de-camp, limiting input from local leaders who were, generally, much more progressive than the national organization.
While Gingrich was coaxing and persuading, former senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyoming) was wielding a heavier stick:
“In April 1995, Simpson launched an investigation into AARP’s finances, including its receipt of government grants, which expanded in June into public hearings on the organization’s tax-exempt status. ‘After the hearing, I said to them, ‘I want to talk to your board,’ Simpson gloats. He told them that [then AARP executive director] Deets, whom he derides as ‘a Svengali, a puppeteer,’ was manipulating them. Privately, according to former AARP officials, Simpson also told AARP that he might not pursue his investigation so intensely if the group would back off its fight against Republican balanced-budget efforts. ‘People like Simpson, who started looking at AARP early on, may have had the effect of moving them toward the middle of the political spectrum,’ says Jim Link, a former Simpson staffer.”
Meanwhile, archconservative Richard Viguerie was assembling a mean menagerie of right-wing alternatives to AARP, including the United Seniors Association, the Seniors Coalition, and the 60 Plus Association, all of which were suddenly thrust into the Capital Hill spotlight and asked regularly to testify on behalf of the Republican Medicare cuts.
Dreyfuss reports AARP has lost about 60,000 members because of its backing of the Medicare drug bill and recent polls indicate the general public now opposes the legislation “that will in fact cover only about 25 percent of seniors’ prescription-drug costs and prevent those who enroll from purchasing any supplemental insurance to cover the difference.”
This is a very disturbing story and many different levels, and Dreyfuss did an excellent job telling it. Highly recommended.
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