The AARP Stumbles on Health Care Reform

The Associated Press reported breaking news yesterday that the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) will formally endorse the House Democrat’s health insurance reform legislation today.

It should come as no surprise that the Daily Uprising team disagrees with the AARP on the merits of the House Bill. However, we also think that it is a political misstep for the venerable special interest group because it reveals the truth of a belief long-held by conservatives: The AARP is deceptive when it claims its purpose is to protect its aged membership from adverse policy decisions because, when it comes down to choosing between the interests of their members and the interests of the Democrat party, they always seem to choose the latter.

Here’s a video of an AARP “town hall” in Dallas when AARP members insisted that its organization was informally backing ObamaCare. The AARP organizers walked out when the members wouldn’t be lectured about the need for socialized medicine:

I certainly hope that younger generations will be as tenacious and obstinate in their defense of liberty as large numbers of elderly Americans have been in this debate.

For those AARP members who are disgruntled, you may want to check out ASA (AmericanSeniors.org) or 60+ (60plus.org) as potential alternatives. It’s always a good idea to comparison shop!

(On a personal note, if you are a child or friend of someone who uses AARP to secure discounts, we think that’s great. It is entirely regrettable that the AARP takes money from a broad spectrum of its membership to advocate the views of a small number of extreme liberals and statists, but that doesn’t mean that the desire to economize and save shouldn’t be commended. It should. Rather than asking them to consider ASA or 60+, we recommend spending some quality time over the next couple of months exploring the world wide web and teaching them how to use an old PC if they don’t already have one. Ultimately, we suspect that many older Americans might not be as interested in paying AARP dues if they realized (independently of politics) that they could find similar or maybe even better deals with a bit of web searching.)

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