AARP vs. the elderly

OPINION:

Some of its 40 million members have been downright obstreperous lately, non-compliant, behaving as if they have minds of their own, and AARP, which may the biggest lobby this planet has ever seen, isn’t about to put up with it, not for a minute.

One of its leaders in Dallas huffed, puffed and walked out of a meeting after some of those attending questioned her generalities about health care restructuring, but that’s clearly not all that big a deal, just the stuff of an entertaining video.

Now comes the real deal, a multimillion dollar ad blitz that, among other things, will inform us that opponents of health care initiatives are inventing the possibility of rationed care out of thin air and are using other “scare tactics.”

Of course, there are plans to ration care. President Obama may not use the word “rationing,” but he has repeatedly talked about having to limit treatments that do not really work well and even wants a Medicare panel that will have exceptional powers to dictate what kind of care should and should not be made available. You can argue that such controls are necessary to keep down costs, but you cannot argue that these controls are something different from rationing. And I think you can be plenty worried that the government will make an unholy mess of rationing.

As for scare tactics, AARP knows something about that. When President Bush put forth a plan allowing people under 55 to put a small portion of their Social Security taxes into private investment accounts, the AARP outrageously and indefensibly made it sound as if the practice would strip benefits from current Social Security recipients. That was a lie. It was demagoguery. It was pathetic.

In fact, AARP is not some saintly, forever well-behaved, absolutely trustworthy advocacy group politely keeping watch over the welfare of everyone in America older than 50. It does have its pluses as a rather extraordinary organization that is itself a half-century old. It does advocate, it does provide helpful services, but it has had government contracts and is also in the insurance business itself. It has been accused by the Senate of misleading customers and its fees can send your premiums sky-high, published news accounts inform us.

The AARP has even been accused of conflict of interest — for instance, when it backed Mr. Bush’s enormously expensive, deficit-widening program of providing prescription drugs through Medicare. I myself think business interests had a lot less to do with that than the AARP’s overall attachment to the kind of liberalism that says we should always be expanding government programs, never reining them in, and that if you happen to spot a tax out there, you should immediately consider ways to make it higher.

I don’t think there’s much doubt that AARP’s resistance to reform of Social Security and Medicare has helped prevent reform, worsening the situation of both programs to the point of the two accumulating tens of trillions of dollars of unfunded liabilities. You can’t fix that with deficits or taxes — it’s just too much money and would be economically devastating to try. And that’s a major reason Medicare rationing is now being discussed, if in euphemistic terms. Something has to be done about entitlement spending.

As for overall health reform, some of the basic AARP-supported reforms are exactly the opposite of what is needed. By testimony of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the plan would cost us hundreds of billions of dollars we cannot afford. It could ultimately lead to a single-payer, government-directed system that could deliver more hurt than help to millions. Reform is needed, but prudent, step-by-step reform — reform that comes our way over a period of years as we try various experiments and see where they lead us.

Some of AARP’s members understand as much.

Jay Ambrose is former Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard News Service.