Ten thousand American baby boomers will turn 65 each day for the next 10 years. This is one of the biggest demographic transitions in U.S. history, and the resulting shifts in health-care spending will require intelligent policy. But a significant conflict of interest has led AARP, senior citizens’ strongest lobby, to put their well-being aside.
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Why is the largest consumer advocacy organization sitting on the sidelines as new federal rules make it harder for patients to get the vital medicines they need? That’s the question every senior should be asking AARP, and the organization’s lucrative business interests help shed light on a likely answer.
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From skyrocketing health insurance premiums, massive deductibles, high drug prices and other unexpected out of pocket costs, affordable health care is becoming increasingly out of reach for far too many Iowa patients and families. Add other calamities such as UnitedHealthcare’s recent walkout on hundreds of thousands of Iowa Medicaid recipients and the situation is even more troubling.
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In 1996, the New York Times said the AARP’s credibility would be at stake if it proceeded with efforts to license its name to managed care plans for a fee because “the policies that might be best for the elderly are not always the policies that are best for the bank account of the A.A.R.P.” Undaunted, the AARP charged full speed ahead. Since then, the AARP’s for-profit financial juggernaut, AARP Services, Inc., has earned so many…
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AARP claims to represent the interests of senior citizens across the United States, so watching the non-profit advocate for keeping prescription drug prices high has been an odd spectacle indeed. David Certner, AARP’s legislative policy director, recently released a letter urging Health and Human Services (HHS) to keep a special-interest loophole in the Anti-Kickback Statute, a law passed by Congress in 1972 to crack down on waste, fraud, and abuse within the healthcare industry.
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What is the AARP up to these days? One of the bigger disasters coming from the more general disaster of Obamacare was the abject failure of the program to rein in rising costs for prescription drugs. In fact, as we’ve discussed here in the past, price increases accelerated after the program went into effect.
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Critics of America’s current drug payment system say middlemen are jacking up prices and question why AARP, which is tied to a middleman organization, opposes a Trump administration proposal that could help seniors. Right now, these middleman organizations, called pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), are protected by safe harbor provisions from certain parts of the Anti-Kickback Statute.
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President Donald Trump’s administration has provided the nonprofit foundation arm of the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) with more than $111 million in a variety of taxpayer-funded grants and contracts. But the gravy train may be coming to a stop soon amid concerns over not just AARP’s work against Trump’s agenda on major big-picture policy items such as healthcare and taxes but also over data privacy concerns for seniors who have trusted the organization…
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