A Supreme Court amicus briefing filed by the AARP indicates that during the national debate over President Obama’s health care overhaul, the senior-citizen advocacy group did not prioritize stopping Medigap providers, including itself, from discriminating against seniors with pre-existing conditions. This stands in stark contrast with AARP’s past claims.
The Supreme Court case pits the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services against Florida and 12 other states that claim Obamacare is unconstitutional.
In its brief, the AARP lists the six priorities it had while advocating in favor of Obamacare while Congress was debating it:
- “Guaranteeing access to affordable coverage for Americans ages 50 to 64 in the individual market who have faced unaffordable insurance based on their age, pre-existing conditions, or health status”
- “Closing the Medicare Part D prescription drug coverage gap (‘doughnut hole’) so people are not forced to choose between paying for necessary medication and paying for other needed expenses”
- “Lowering drug costs by increasing availability of generic biologics, which are used to treat serious conditions like cancer, multiple sclerosis, anemia, and rheumatoid arthritis, and can cost as much as $10,000 or more per month”
- “Reducing costly hospital re-admissions through a Medicare Transitional Care Benefit, which helps people safely transition to home or another setting after a hospital stay”
- “Increasing funding and eligibility for home and community based services for people with chronic conditions, which would save money, improve quality of life for individuals who need these services, and better enable them to live at home”
- “Helping low-income Americans so that people who saved a small nest egg can still receive assistance with premiums and out-of-pocket health costs”
Missing from the list is the support AARP previously boasted for a portion of the original Obamacare bill in the House that would have stopped Medigap providers, including AARP and the insurers with which it has lucrative partnerships, from discriminating against seniors with pre-existing conditions.
Medigap plans are supplemental coverage that Medicare recipients may purchase. They insure seniors more comprehensive coverage than what Medicare provides.
In June, The Daily Caller obtained an early copy of the Obamacare legislative proposal which included a provision stopping AARP and other Medigap providers from discriminating against seniors with pre-existing conditions. At some point before the House bill was introduced in September 2009, Democratic lawmakers removed that provision.
A House Democratic aide told Kaiser Health News in early 2011 that the provision was removed before the bill was introduced because it cost too much.
The “provision to provide disabled Medicare beneficiaries better coverage was dropped from the legislation during congressional negotiations because it would have increased Medicare costs, according to a House Democratic congressional aide,” wrote KHN’s Susan Jaffe on March 7, 2011. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the provision would cost $4.1 billion over a 10-year period.
An AARP spokesman, Jim Dau, told TheDC in June that the group did support that provision, and that the AARP supported a parallel Senate bill from Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry for that reason. The Kerry bill never passed.
“We supported including the provision in the health care law, and we continue to support it as standalone legislation,” Dau said then. “We believe everyone in Medicare should have the same consumer protections, regardless of their health history.”
According to the AARP, though, cost should not have been a factor. The organization said numerous times during the health care debate that it would forgo its own profits to cover costs of improved health insurance for seniors.
“To suggest there is a commercial conspiracy is ludicrous,” AARP’s chief lobbyist David Sloane told the Tacoma News-Tribune in October 2009, answering charges that his organization was supporting Obamacare in order to bolster its partners’ profitable Medigap programs. “As we have said, we would gladly forgo every dime of revenue to fix the health care system.”
Yet in its Supreme Court brief, the Medigap proposal was not included on AARP’s list of priorities.
The AARP generated more than $675 million in “royalty revenue” in 2010 alone. More than $440 million of that came from AARP’s partnership with United Health Group, a Medigap provider that uses the AARP brand in its marketing, in exchange for the royalty payments.
If the AARP’s 2010 revenue numbers were to remain steady, it would earn more than enough royalty income during ten years — $6.75 billion — to cover the projected $4.1 billion cost of forcing Medigap providers to cover seniors without regard for their pre-existing medical conditions.
Dau has said AARP partners have accepted almost all Medigap plan applicants, rendering the provision needless.
“In 2010, UnitedHealthcare accepted 99.92% of applicants for AARP-branded Medicare supplement plans,” Dau said. “We can’t control who other Medigap providers choose to insure, but we can lend our name to products that offer access to more Americans than other plans on the market. With the exception of end-stage renal disease, AARP branded plans accept all beneficiaries regardless of preexisting health conditions.”
Georgia Republican Rep. Phil Gingrey, a doctor before entering politics and an outspoken AARP critic, told TheDC that the AARP’s failure to act on behalf of seniors with special medical needs is surprising.
“I understand that AARP previously advocated providing sick seniors enrolled in Medicare the same protections as non-Medicare patients,” Gingrey said in an email. “I was surprised to see AARP did not name this effort among their top priorities. This is a fundamental misjudgment that I urge them to remedy.”
AARP legislative policy director David Certner dismissed the significance of the AARP omitting Medigap reform from the group’s list of top Obamacare priorities. “The six key priorities listed in AARP’s amicus brief were based on input from and concerns of our members, and were set by our Board of Directors at the outset of the health care reform debate,” Certner said in an email on Thursday. “Other priorities also emerged during the debate.”
“Senator Kerry’s legislation was introduced after Congress passed the healthcare reform bill that is the subject of the current Supreme Court case,” Certner added. “The issues addressed in the Kerry bill continue to be a priority for AARP. We endorsed this bill, and we will continue to fight to extend similar consumer protections to all people in Medicare.”
