Health Reform: The tax-exempt seniors group that pushed hard to get ObamaCare passed stands to reap a billion-dollar reward over the next decade as ObamaCare destroys the competition to the products it endorses.
During what passed for a debate on ObamaCare, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which administers benefits under Medicare, issued what can only be called a gag order after private insurer Humana Inc. warned its Medicare Advantage customers in a letter that ObamaCare might cause them to lose some benefits.
It was because that letter exposed one of Obama-Care's biggest lies — the claim that if you liked your coverage you can keep it. Millions of seniors liked Medicare Advantage and still do. Fearful of the consequences of the hundreds of billions ObamaCare would cut out of Medicare, and angry about AARP's support for health care reform, CBS News reported in 2009 how at least 60,000 seniors tore up and mailed back their AARP membership cards.
President Obama told a town meeting in Portsmouth, N.H., "We have the AARP on board because they know this is a good deal for our seniors." Now a new report released by GOP members on the House Ways and Means Committee, "Behind the Veil: The AARP America Doesn't Know," says the AARP may have been on board simply because it was a good deal for it.
The report by House Ways and Means Committee members Wally Herger, R-Calif., and Dave Reichert, R-Wash., compiles the results of a yearlong investigation. It notes that as a result of the health care law, the Obama administration estimates more than 7 million seniors will lose their current Medicare Advantage plan and that AARP stands to benefit handsomely from that fact and the law it lobbied for through the sale of its competing, endorsed Medicare insurance products.
According to the report, AARP had the fourth-highest lobbying expenditures from 1998 to 2010, just below General Electric but above PhRMA. In its lobbying efforts, AARP sold itself as an advocate for seniors against those big, bad insurance companies. Yet it makes tons of cash from endorsing products sold by those same insurance companies.
Royalties from licensing the use of AARP's name earned $657 million for the organization in 2009, some 46% of its total revenue vs. just 17% from membership dues. Since 2002, income derived from AARP's business relationships, primarily with insurance companies, has nearly tripled, increasing by $417 million.
The millions forced by ObamaCare to lose the Medicare Advantage coverage will result, the report says "in a massive migration of seniors to Medigap plans. AARP is the nation's leading provider of Medigap plans and has a contract in which AARP financially gains for every additional Medigap enrollee. "
The amount AARP will gain from ObamaCare — with cost-effectiveness mandates leading to rationed care, the destruction of medical innovation and health care decisions made by bureaucrats rather than doctors and patients — is staggering.
"AARP's financial gain from the health care law," the report states, "could exceed $1 billion during the next 10 years. This is because AARP will see their royalty payments increase as seniors are forced out of (Medicare Advantage) plans and buy AARP Medigap plans instead."
This morphing of a touted seniors service organization to just another lobby feeding at the federal trough for fun and profit has Republicans questioning the group's tax-exempt status.
"During this investigation it became very clear that despite its privileged tax-exempt status, in many cases, AARP represents a for-profit entity, in fact, an insurance company," said Ways and Means Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La.
This shameless exploitation of seniors for profit is yet one more reason for pulling the plug on ObamaCare and issuing a "do not resuscitate" order for this government power grab.
No comments:
Post a Comment