Posted on 07/30/2009 9:12:22 PM PDT by Shellybenoit
Like every other week since my 50th birthday,in today's mail I received the envelope from AARP reminding me that I was getting on in years, and that soon I would want to be a member so I can get that discount from the local cinema.
Today's letter was different, it sparked me into action, not to join the group but to tell them to stop mailing me the letters as I could not join an organization the could support an anti-senior legislation like Obamacare.
The phone call started out very civilly, I pointed out that when the plan talked about limiting costs it was really talking about rationing, and I didn't understand how an organization that lobby's for seniors would publicly support a plan that will end up euthanizing seniors.The lady on the other end said, "Oh we don't support the whole plan, just three elements of the plan, closing the doughnut hole, no preconditions and affordable coverage."
"So Wait, does that mean the president is lying when he counts AARP as one of the Plan's supporters?" I asked. "no he isn't really lying, we support those three parts" she said as she avoided the question. So I asked her how could they allow the president to say that AARP was a supporter, did they issue a press release saying they only support those three points?
Folks we went on like this for another five minutes, the fact is, either AARP is lying about only supporting three of the points of the President's health care plan, or they are doing themselves a major disservice by protecting Obama and letting the President exaggerate their cooperation. Either way the group has sacrificed its membership to help the President:
(Excerpt) Read more at yidwithlid.blogspot.com ...
everybody’s lying.
AARP is a liberal organization. That should be all you need to know.
damn right and not exactly pro second amendment either.
I trashed it, but, many who recieve it may think the HC bill is fine, since their beloved AARP is supporting it.
This is BS, they are dooping people who are elderly & really don't understand what that mailing was all about.
It was very deceptive & many who are much older may not understand it!
And my response to their reply:
AARP: As a provider and director of quality assurance in the health care field for thirty-five years, let me remark on how astoundingly patronizing, misleading , but oddly revealing was your reply to my recent e-mail to AARP regarding that portion of the “stimulus bill” just passed by Congress dealing with our medical system. Where to begin? Perhaps with the biggest big lie of all – “our broken health care system”. Our health care system is not “broken”. Eighty-five percent of the people in this country have appropriate access to the system, as do thousands from all over the world who come here annually seeking diagnosis and treatment which they can’t receive under the wretched systems, most of them nationalized, in their own countries. Of those not adequately plugged into our system, three quarters are either eligible for coverage by already existing programs but not enrolled due to being irresponsible or ill-informed, illegal aliens who shouldn’t be in the country at all, or those capable of purchasing healthcare with their own resources but for their own reasons not doing so. The remaining quarter can easily be covered if need-be by extensions of current programs, including Medical Savings Accounts, at a fraction of the cost and none of the disruption which will result from eliminating Medicare along with other programs and putting everyone in one massive nationalized system, which AARP clearly favors.
Your reply completely ignored any mention of those features in the “stimulus bill” which are in fact the first stealth steps toward this all-inclusive nationalized program, and with good reason. Such programs where instituted in other countries are notoriously inefficient, technologically backward, and ineffective in consistently delivering quality medical care (see among others “Lives at Risk” by Goodman et al ). A ”National Coordinator of Health Information Technology”, a “Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research”, health care determinations based on cost and how long the actuarial tables say one has to live – all mentioned or implied in the bill – are modeled on the British health system, which is perhaps the worst of the worst. News stories in that country chronicle the system’s problems virtually daily. Hospitals are so underfunded and understaffed that they are plagued by outbreaks of infection continually. Patients die waiting for tests or treatments that are routinely available in this country. After spending seventy billion pounds on the development of an integrated medical information system (sound familiar?) the National Health Service has not yet been able to effectively link together the elements of the system or in fact sign off on the completion of any individual element. Let’s look at the practice of “stacking” as practiced in London hospitals. When patients in their emergency rooms were spending up to two days waiting for treatment, the NPS decided to fix the problem by ordering that henceforth no patient would wait for more than two hours until being seem by a physician. When the government is in charge it can do such things, and it worked. Now no patient admitted to an ER waits longer than two hours to be seen. But they do stack up outside ER’s waiting for their turn to be admitted, which comes when ER staff believes they can be seen within two hours. Now people are dying because they can’t get an ambulance to take them to the hospital because patients are waiting in the ambulances to get into ER’s. You will attempt to dismiss all this by calling it “scare tactics”. I call it just plain scary.
You neatly avoid addressing any of this unpleasantness by focusing your reply on a disingenuous consideration of “comparative effectiveness research”, which is a boondoggle and Trojan Horse. The most effective treatment for any patient is the one that works for that patient. To try to determine the best therapy in a group and then go back and apply that treatment to an individual patient, expecting that it will automatically be the optimum therapy for that patient, is nonsense. Any gains which might be made in treatment effectiveness through such research would be trivial compared to those produced by an equivalent funding to research into cancer and heart disease. It is not the way to improve patient care. It is, however, the way to collect massive amounts of confidential information on private citizens, and to provide government bureaucrat wonks with the illusion that they can play doctor and override treatment decisions made by trained and experienced physicians. It is an attempt at medicine by cookbook, at one-size-fits-all health care. You know, one- size-fits-all like the spam generic reply you sent to me and probably hundreds of others, none of whom likely felt their concerns were adequately addressed. I will be posting your comments along with this response on several internet websites where there have been recent discussions about the impending tragedy in American medical care. I think it important that as much of the public as possible become aware of AARP’s insensitivity to the genuine concerns many of us have regarding the contemplated changes in health care, your contemptuous dismissal of those raising such concerns as “opponents of health care reform”, and your hostility to interests attempting to preserve Medicare and the rest of our medical system, the best in the world , rather than destroying them. I thank you for confirming my wife’s oft-stated opinion that “AARP isn’t good for much” and my own that you are nothing but one more shill organization for the left and the Democrat party. Oh, and in these days of tight money thanks too for helping us determine how we can save a few bucks in the future – by not renewing our AARP membership.
Ergo, it is in the financial interest of the staff at AARP to have their members die off rapidly in their 70s and 80s.
All the smart people know this about that organization.
The sad thing is, many seniors probably fall for this tripe hook, line and sinker.
I hope all seniors will drop out of aarp, and tell them WHY!
I just got an offer to join today. I wrote back, saying we had never joined in the first place because we knew they were a bunch of commie libs and that their support of Obamacare confirms our opinion of them.
AARP has more lies on its website today about the end of life counseling for folks 65 and older.
AARP is just like any other organization who lives off of other people’s money without really doing a heck of a lot besides protecting their high-paying jobs.
WTG!
We all need to write letters to the editor to our hometown newspapers to inform others of AARP’s policies of putting liberal politics before senior citizens. Seniors read letters to editors.
Any senior that supports that communist organization deserves to be eliminated as a useless eater!
**I just got an offer to join today.**
I haven’t received ANYTHING FROM AARP since ...
I took their Postage Paid pre addressed envelope, and taped it to ... a BRICK ... thay haven’t sent anything since.. I guess they MIGHT have gotten the IDEA.
AARP lies to everybody.
I dont know who to trust anymore. I was at my doctor yesterday having tests to make sure my blood thinners are working so I asked him about the end of life stuff in obamacare and what he thought of it. He talked a bunch about living wills and hospice care and said it was a good thing. He actually laughed when I said they were going to kill older people like me and he said doctors would never allow something like that its really about making your own decisions about your own care in advance so your family doesnt have to guess and struggle with it.
Ive known this doctor for many years he was with us when my husband passed and is even a republican. He is not a fan of ozero but didnt seem that worried about obamacare. I always thought I could trust him I dont know what to think now.
AARP is no more an advocate for seniors,than NOW is for women! They are both nothing but front groups,just as RED as the ACLU! People who oppose the execution of murderers,but condone infanticide and euthanasia of the elderly.No wonder Michael Savage calls Liberalism a mental disease.
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