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AARP has exhibited breath-taking defiance of its more vocal members by backing the House healthcare reform bill.

Many seniors in this summer’s heated town-hall meetings heard plenty of loaded phrases that they believe applied mostly to them: rationing of medical care, death panels, Medicare "cuts." Polls consistently show that the elderly represent the stiffest opponents to reform. But AARP has echoed the Democratic leadership by insisting that the $1.2 trillion House bill would enhance senior benefits. Its membership is fairly evenly divided among Democrats, Republicans and independents, but the conservative wing is quite outspoken in its opposition to the organization’s political stance. An estimated 40,000 have opted to leave AARP, although that is only about 1 percent of the membership. In a counteroffensive, AARP has conducted about 150 tele-town-hall meetings and an additional 135 live town-hall meetings and installed toll-free numbers to explain its position to nervous and angry constituents.

First, traditional Medicare is actually improved in the House legislation. The prescription-coverage gap known as the "doughnut hole" would gradually close, the government would get the authority to negotiate Medicare drug prices, the program would cover more preventive services and would encourage savings for long-term care. Most of the cuts needed to help pay for healthcare reform are coming out of Medicare Advantage, which has been unfairly subsidized. Under Medicare Advantage, the government pays private insurance plans a specific amount monthly for each Medicare patient to cover hospitalization, physician visits and other benefits. The government paid about 14 percent more for these services than it paid under traditional Medicare despite all Medicare recipients paying the same premium and there is no evidence of better-quality care under Medicare Advantage. About 23 percent of Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled in Advantage plans. The 2003 Republican-backed Medicare Modernization Act subsidized the program to grow privatization and increase competition, but the subsidies have had the opposite economic effect. Second, AARP’s younger members, age 50-64, are buckling under the weight of crushing costs of the individual insurance market. The organization’s membership is divided by a metaphorical Berlin Wall.

About half of all U.S. workers leave their jobs earlier than they planned, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Of those, about 42 percent do so because of health or disability problems and about 34 percent because their jobs were eliminated. Pre-Medicare AARP-eligible members without employer insurance pay five or six times in premiums what people in their 20s pay, at a time when their job prospects are the direst  especially if they have chronic or disabling conditions. The House bill would still allow insurance premium variation based on age, but it would limit that price spread to twice the cheapest cost for the same policy.  Allowing that reimbursement decrease would have resulted in many physicians abandoning their Medicare patients.

Source: The Washington Post

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