News & Blogs

Morning Edition: States Question Costs Of Middlemen That Manage Medicaid Drug Benefits

Several states are questioning the cost of using pharmacy middlemen to manage their prescription drug programs in a movement that could shake up the complex system that manages how pharmaceuticals are priced and paid for. The debate is playing out this week in an Ohio courtroom, as the state fights to release a report detailing what it paid two middlemen, CVS Health and Optum, to manage its Medicaid program’s prescription drug plans.

Mike Stankiewicz: UnitedHealth, AARP sued for diverting $400M a year to illegal rebates

The country’s largest Medigap insurer and an interest group for the elderly have been hit with a lawsuit accusing them of illegally diverting hundreds of millions of dollars a year. A class action lawsuit (PDF) was filed on Wednesday on behalf of “a nationwide class of Medicare-eligible individuals” who claim the insurer and AARP are diverting part of their Medigap payments to fund an illegal “rebating scheme.”

Alan Simpson: AARP is a ‘monstrous organization’ that blocks changes needed to save Social Security

The only way to stop the cycle of overspending in Washington and then fighting over raising the debt ceiling is to reform entitlements, anti-debt crusader Alan Simpson told CNBC on Tuesday. “Do something with the solvency of Social Security, which is the biggest elephant in all the rooms,” said Simpson, retired U.S. senator from Wyoming and GOP co-chair of former President Barack Obama’s bipartisan debt commission.

Richard Eisenberg: The Troubling AARP Long-Term Care Scorecard

Roughly 52% of people turning 65 today will require long-term care at some point, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m sad to say that the new AARP Long-Term Services and Supports State Scorecard finds that most states aren’t doing a great job helping people needing such care.

Chris Jacobs: AARP Tars Health Insurance ‘Age Tax’ While Profiting Big From One

Over the past few weeks, AARP—an organization that purportedly advocates on behalf of seniors—has been running advertisements claiming that the House health-care bill would impose an “age tax” on seniors by allowing for greater variation in premiums. It knows of which it speaks: AARP has literally made billions of dollars by imposing its own “tax” on seniors buying health insurance policies, not to mention denying care to individuals with disabilities.

AARP Tax Filings: Historical

Stephen Miller: Here’s why I’ll never ever join the AARP

Today I got another letter from AARP. The letters have been coming pretty much every week for 25 years. But in the past two months they’ve changed. AARP used to ask me to join. Now the letters from the lobbying group for older Americans say that I have joined but I haven’t paid my bill.

Gene Weingarten: Let’s get to the root of AARP’s dental insurance

Like most of you, I have health insurance. Like most of you, my health insurance says it covers dental work. As with most of you, this is basically a fiction. Insurance companies are famously stingy at the dentist. Whenever I leave my dentist’s office, he and I follow a ritual. He solemnly informs me he will first bill my insurer, and I agree that would indeed be prudent. Then, about six weeks later, I get…