AARP Pivots, New Jersey Democrats Show Poise

There were a couple interesting stories last week that indicate that the political winds are changing.

AARP Pivots

First, AARP, the liberal lobbying group and marketing machine announced it was dropping its longstanding opposition to cutting Social Security benefits.  AARP's long-time policy chief, John Rother, seems to have come to the conclusion that entitlement reform is inevitable.  "The ship was sailing.  I wanted to be at the wheel when that happens", he explained.

However, BizzyBlog thinks that perhaps AARP has made the "pivot" to stop membership bleeding.  There is some indication that AARP may have seen a loss of as many as 3 million members over the last few years due to their efforts to kill President Bush's Social Security reform discussion and their heavy support for Obamacare.

I dropped out of AARP soon after joining when I turned age 50 when I saw that the organization was nothing but a direct mail marketing and liberal lobbying firm masquerading as a non-profit senior citizens group.

At that time I did a little research into the origins of AARP and found that the historical background that AARP portrays does not quite tell the true story.  AARP likes to point to Dr. Ethel Percy Andrus, a retired high school principal, as being the founder of AARP.  However, in reality, an insurance salesman named Leonard Davis funded the organization's founding with $50,000 when he saw how useful it could be to sell insurance to senior citizens.  This insurance salesman ultimately saw how profitable this marketing front could be and formed his own insurance company, Colonial Penn, which for many years had the exclusive right to sell insurance to AARP "members".   He built all of this into what ultimately became a fortune that approached $200 million.  Check out this Money article from 1988 for a more balance view than AARP puts forward.

One of my main complaints about AARP over the last decade has been that they could and should have taken the lead in using their scale to negotiate group medical programs for pre-Medicare retirees between the age of 50 and 65.  This would have been consistent with the founding ideals of the organization.  This is the age group that is also most vulnerable in today's health care system from pre-existing condition exclusions and the like.  Instead of working to put a private sector solution together that would benefit their members, they put all of their efforts into a government solution.  A government solution that diminished Medicare benefits to fund the government plan.

Of course, since AARP's largest source of revenues comes from selling Medicare Supplemental policies this will work out just fine for AARP's bottom line.  For every dollar that Medicare does not pay, senior citizens need a supplemental policy to protect against out of pocket costs.  A very convenient windfall for AARP which is happy to sell the added insurance protection!

Democrat Controlled Legislature Poised To Strip Public Employees of Healthcare Bargaining Rights

The second story that caught my eye was the Democrat controlled New Jersey Senate Budget  Committee voted 9-4 that would effectively strip public employees in that state of the right to bargain over healthcare benefits.

The floor votes on this law is scheduled for this week.  Democrats control the Senate 24-16 and the Assembly 47-33.

We can expect a lot of noise out of New Jersey this week.  It will be interesting to see how it plays out. However, when we see the AARP pivoting and New Jersey Democrats poised to take on the public sector unions the political winds are blowing pretty hard.  It may be time to start battening down the hatches in Washington.