Something goes right, oh my ...

AARP, AMA, American Cancer Society, Consumers Union Endorse House Health Care Reform

AARP of the split mind and forked tongue?

AARP of 2 minds on private plans

(Note: I have an AARP sponsored Medicare Part D (prescription drug) plan because it was the best I could find which does not mean I like or approve of the way Part D is structured. But I have to hand it to AARP -- their plan is the most straight forward and complete.)

Better hold onto your wallet ...

AARP and Walgreens want to 'educate' you ...

Walgreens Sings AARP's Praises by Jean Luo

A frustrated pharmacist ...

So why did they cancel her AARP Medicare Prescription Plan retroactively? And why is the cancellation date so fluid?

I am a pharmacist and if anyone ever tells you that market forces are the solution to our health care mess --- please give them a fat lip for me, because it is crap.

I have a customer... we will call her Jane Doe. She used to be on Minnesota Medical Assistance but when our "President" came up with that "wonderful" Medicare Part D pile of bull, this woman's prescription program was shifted to that program. She didn't have a choice about switching to Medicare Part D, but she did have a few choices of carriers within the system.

She decided to use a program sponsored by AARP. Seemed like a good idea....AARP works with seniors all the time. However, AARP does not administer the program. No, they farm that out to a Pharmacy Benefit Manager... in this case it was RX Solutions.

...

Will we every hear the end of the story?

Get your health care at Walgreens?

The AARP Bulletin has an article touting mini-clinics moving into "pharmacies, discount stores and supermarkets, including CVS, Walgreens, Target, Wal-Mart and Kroger, as well as locally owned drug and grocery stores."

I wish I saw this trend as an attempt to better the healthcare of citizens and residents of this country instead of another commercial enterprise based on greed.

This is really bad news ...

AARP is expanding as an insurance company to carry individual policies for people from 50 to 64.

AARP should stop pretending that they an advocacy organization. They are just another greedy corporation who will put their obscene profits ahead of the citizens of this country who need universal health care, not another insurance company taking their cut.

AARP ENTERS THE PRIVATE INSURANCE MARKET - Great. Yet another powerful group with a vested interest in experience-rated private healthcare that works for everyone except, you know, the people who actually need it. That's just peachy.

The title's right ...

The book's out of print, or at least one can only get used copies through amazon.com, so I don't know what the author's take is. Too often those who take AARP on are working from an interest in eliminating all universal social programs and attempting to cause a divide between generations instead of promoting an interest in the welfare of all.

If AARP took their role seriously they would be concerned that all Americans, present and future are guaranteed a healthy and livable retirement. To ensure that they would have to be interested in what is happening to the economy, to the jobs, to the health care of all Americans.

We are in a fight for the future of America. AARP is in marketing mode. Their aim is profit and obscene salaries for their executives like all for-profit American corporations in this day and age.

They start from the position that they own their membership -- not the other way around.

That's the same attitude that the GOP has about the United States. They believe they do (or at least should) own us. Not the other way around.

Meet Weird Wally ...

... who has as little faith in AARP as have I.

Weird Wally Gets Even Weirder

Why doesn't AARP look to their own members?

The AARP is looking for a blogger April 13th, 2007

Full-time, in New York, and they want to make you a TV star, too. Why not just get an actual AARP member or two to blog?

Good question and I think it's because AARP sees the membership a source of income (for AARP) and not as members of an organization brought together because of common goals. AARP's goal is like any for profit organization, the non-profit arm is just a convenient fiction.

AARP's goal is to make money by any means

• 1st through marketing efforts
  
• 2nd by providing service if necessary
  

Novelli's AARP censors left leaning posters ...

This post at the Senior Citizens Consortium Blog documents the problem with the increasing corporate control of message boards and other individual communications and posting mechanisms on the web. As these entitities merge there will be less and less freedom of expression and more thought control as with the established media.

Boycotting the AARP Issues and Elections forum

BuzzFlash entry that led me to the above post.

Note that the post explains that it is not AARP 'the non-profit entity' that is treating these individuals based their political viewpoints.

It should be clearly understood that the AARP itself does not operate the board, it has relegated that responsibility to its “for profit” subsidiary, AARP Services. This organization in turn has outsourced the operation of the AARP Forum to a company that has placed individuals who appear, to have a strong oriention against non-right wing posters.

It is AARP 'the for-profit' mindset that Arch-Republican Novelli brings to the AARP world that hands off the responsibilty, not to the AARP membership, but to some corporate organization. That's the Republican big-daddy approach that AARP embodies.

About the Big Pharma Mafia ...

60 minutes documents the passing of the Medicare Part D (the prescription drug plan) legislation and the subsequent exodus of individuals, who helped the pharmaceutical industry get what they wanted, to highly paid positions with the industry or their enablers.

Watch the video clip at Crooks and Liars:

Under the Influence: How Lobbyists Wrote and Bought the Rx Drug Bill

Though initially AARP came out against this bill AARP's Republican CEO Bill Novelli made a last minute switch in favor of the bill and even advertised for its passage.

Personal disclaimer: When AARP made that switch to the dark side I cancelled my membership. I still am not a member but when I began looking into prescription drug plans AARP's was definitely the best (from my perspective). Best does not necessarily mean good. Many plans I looked at would not have saved money, in fact with their trick of only covering certain drugs and not others it can actually cost more. Though AARP's plan seems good at present it still has the ability of becoming a bait and switch, a capability that was written into the Pharma Mafia legislation.

Blast AARP's Novelli ...

Here's someone who feels more strongly than I about AARP's devious role in Medicare Part D in particular and health care in general.

ahgoldberg: AARP Blows Smoke on Health Care
... The "Terminator's" "bold initiativel" which AARP praises would cover "all of 20 per cent" of those not covered by any health insurance. "Wow!" "Damn," now that's "just the most pumped up leadership" any state can get. Now "isn't it?"

Maine, which has already adopted legislation which would provide health care of all its people by 2009, but is keeping private health insurance companies, gets no such raves, and actually doesn't get a mention by AARP. Yet obviously Maine has gone further than all the other states put together. A single payer plan would have been better, but having universal health care coverage of some kind even if it does rely too much on the private sector should have gotten an honorable mention by AARP.

But AARP, headed by Bill Novelli, a real phony, con artist for the right and far right, has been doing things the wrong way and supporting the neo con job/rip off market concept fraud all the way on this issue for some time. A good while back when W's administration was seeking to sneak through legislation on prescription drugs with regard to Medicare coverage, AARP jumped in to back this neo con job, rip off, and likely contributed mightily to its passage, thoroughly ripping off seniors. AARP is there when seniors really don't need them to help the neo con gang rip them off. Isn't that "just lovely?" ...