What Does AARP Stand For?

If you're over 50 you've already heard from the folks at the AARP. If you think you know who or what the AARP is, or what AARP stands for, you're probably mistaken. Today, rather than representing the interests of retired Americans, AARP represents what can only be called a political agenda. 

Last year, when the AARP campaigned in support of healthcare reform legislation that many believed threatened Medicare benefits, people began to ask who does AARP represent, and what exactly does AARP stand for, both the letters in its name and the organization itself.

AARP once did "stand for" something. In fact two things. The letters stood for American Association of Retired Persons, and the organization stood for, in support of, the interests of retired people. Or is it persons?

But today many people don't retire at 65, if they actually still have jobs to go to, and the AARP sends membership applications to anyone who turns 50. If the AARP continues to lower the age for membership, the bar to entry will be so low that toddlers will be able to get over it and become members.  

So in 1998, with the name no longer reflecting the demographics of its members, it was changed to just a set of letters. Today, the organization itself no longer reflects the interests of what it claims are its 40 million members.

But are these really "members?" They don't show up for meetings or make policy decisions. They don't actually elect delegates to represent them. It's probably even less representative and democratic than any business corporation. Those 40 million "members" are members only because they pay a nominal annual fee of $16, which gets them what they really want...discounts on everything from hotel rooms to health insurance and prescription drugs. 

For $16 you become a member of AARP in the same sense that you become an American Express member for $150.  The difference is that American Express doesn't go to Washington claiming to speak for the interests of its 48 million "members."  Something that AARP does. But who appointed AARP to speak for 40 million Americans?  How could they? That's more than 10 percent of the nation's population.  Only the president of the United States can claim such a large constituency.

It's time for AARP to get honest. It does not represent the interests of seniors, retired people, or even people over 50. It's a marketing organization that licenses its name to hawkers of products and services to those people. It then leverages its market clout to promote a political agenda that is often at odds with the true interests of the people it disingenuously claims to represent.  That might require another name change, although it would be hard to spell out in a handful of letters.

The battered American syndrome

The attitude of most Americans toward attempts by their government to "help" them is not dissimilar from the attitude of woman suffering from "battered wives syndrome." They believe the next time will be better than the last time. Whatever happened before, no matter how often, won't happen again. They'll give him, or it, another chance.

The result, however, is usually disappointment, bruises, scars or worse. But the scars heal, the bruises fade and the disappointment turns into hope. Rarely, it seems, is the result disillusionment or even long lasting insight. Today, despite past experiences and numerous failed examples of previous efforts of the government to deliver on its promises, many Americans believe their government can actually deliver a health care system that is better than what they already have.

Granted what they have is not perfect. Too many people don't receive the health care they should get because they can't afford the care or the insurance that'll enable them to get it. Others simply can't get it because know one will offer it to them or they don't work for an employer who offers it. Or, they don't have an employer. Still other don't buy insurance simply because they don't think they need it since they are young, healthy and immortal and therefore won't die. Instead they spend the money they've saved by living with their parents to buy a faster car or motorcycle that will accelerate from zero to death in 12 seconds, letting taxpayers cover the expense of peeling them off the pavement or unwrapping them from around the tree.

We, of course, already have a government health care program. It's called Medicare. It's modeled after that other great American Ponzi scheme, Social Security. Together these programs provide the elderly with retirement and health care benefits. Most recipients are happy with these programs because the benefits can be very generous. For example, while most working people have to make do with the limited choices of HMOs, Medicare recipients can go to any doctor they want. Since the elderly vote, and in some Midwestern cities they vote even after they've died, Congress has been very generous with those benefits.

But Medicare is no more an example of a successful government program than was President Johnson's War on Poverty, which poverty won; the U.S. Postal Service, which is considering cutting Saturday delivery while raising rates; or FEMA's response to any recent natural disaster. Medicare and Social Securty are slowly bleeding the country dry. Sometime this century all collected federal taxes will to go to pay for elderly entitlements.

Simply put, Medicare and Social Security are huge wealth redistribution programs in which money is taken from those working and earning to be lavished on the elderly who aren't doing either. A government health care program for everyone not covered by private insurance, which in time will be everyone, will, according to the Obama administration, be very different. It will be a huge wealth redistribution program in which money is taken from those working and earning and lavished on anyone who isn't doing either.

The fatal flaw with this approach is the same one Margaret Thatcher identified as the problem with socialism, "eventually you run out of other people's money."