Geee Posted March 30, 2011 Share Posted March 30, 2011 American Spectator:For those of us who toil in the vineyards of health care finance it has long been obvious that the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) is, for all intents and purposes, an insurance company disguised as an advocacy group. Thus, it was something of surprise when AARP announced its support for ObamaCare in the fall of 2009. Why would a financial conglomerate so dependent on insurance-related revenue endorse a bill that promised to wreck the health insurance industry? Then, the penny dropped. One of the ways the Democrats proposed to "pay" for their health care law was by cutting the Medicare Advantage (MA) program by $200 billion. This would inevitably drive many carriers out of the MA market and herd millions of seniors back to the more expensive coverage of traditional Medicare.How would that benefit AARP? Traditional Medicare imposes much higher deductibles and co-pays on its beneficiaries than does MA, and the vast majority of AARP's revenue derives from sales of "Medigap" policies that purport to cover those out-of-pocket expenses. In other words, the AARP endorsed a law that does real financial harm to seniors in order to reap a crop of new customers when ObamaCare guts Medicare Advantage. And it gets worse: Most of the victims of this cynical strategy will be low-income and minority seniors. According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), nearly 60% of MA beneficiaries have annual incomes of $10,000 to $30,000. Moreover, nearly 30% of Medicare Advantage enrollees are minorities, compared to about 20% for traditional Medicare. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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