NYTimes/Krugman: AARP gone astray ["corrupted"?]

November 21, 2003
OP-ED COLUMNIST 

AARP Gone Astray
By PAUL KRUGMAN

"This is a good bill that will help every Medicare beneficiary," wrote
Tom Scully, the Medicare administrator, in a letter to The New York
Times defending the prescription drug bill. That's flatly untrue. (Are
you surprised?) As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points
out, the bill will force millions of beneficiaries to pay more for
drugs, thanks to a provision that cuts off supplemental aid from
Medicaid. Poorer recipients may find previously affordable drugs
moving out of reach.

That's only one of a number of anti-retiree measures tucked away in
the bill. It contains several Trojan horse provisions that are clearly
intended to undermine Medicare over time — it will allow private
insurers to cherry-pick healthy clients in selected cities, and it
will heavily subsidize private plans competing with traditional
Medicare. Meanwhile, the bill prohibits Medicare from using its
bargaining power to cut drug prices; drug company stocks have soared
since the bill's details became public.

Yet the bill has a good chance of passing, thanks to an endorsement
from AARP, the retiree advocacy organization, which has already begun
an expensive advertising campaign on the bill's behalf. What's going
on?

Let's step back a minute. This is a bill with huge implications for
the future of Medicare. It's also, at best, highly controversial. One
might therefore have expected an advocacy group for retired Americans
to take its time in responding — to make sure that major groups of
retirees won't actually be hurt, and to poll its members to be sure
that they are well informed about what the bill contains and don't
object to it.

Instead, AARP has thrown its weight behind an effort to ram the bill
through before Thanksgiving. And no, it's not urgent to get the bill
passed so retirees can get immediate relief. The plan won't kick in
until 2006 in any case, so no harm will be done if the nation takes
some time to consider.

Many of AARP's members feel betrayed. The message boards at the
organization's Web site have filled up with outraged posts. A number
of those posts say something like this: "Now you're just an insurance
company." Indeed, that may get to the heart of the matter.

...

article at
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/21/opinion/21KRUG.html