AARP backs Democrats in Senate health care fight

With a Senate showdown looming, the politically potent AARP rode to the rescue of Democrats on Wednesday, supporting $460 billion in Medicare cuts to help pay for landmark health insurance legislation.

As Republicans pressed to restore the cuts, AARP said Democrats merely were recommending elimination of waste and inefficiency within the giant health care program for seniors.

“Most importantly, the legislation does not reduce any guaranteed Medicare benefits,” A. Barry Rand, the AARP’s CEO, said in a letter to senators.

Believe me, I am in favor of health care reform. We definitely need something. In my years of employment, I have never yet had employer-sponsored health insurance. What I have learned through attempting to obtain individual coverage is that I could eat and have a roof over my head or I could have a decent health care plan, but not both.

For this reason, I think this bill is going to be a hugely expensive flop. First of all, the health insurance industry promised us sixteen years ago, when Bill Clinton’s administration proposed something similar, that they would take care of us without government taking over health care. The current mess that we have is what privately-owned insurance companies gave us. Is this really the best we can do? Seriously?

Secondly, the bill repeats the mistake of Massachusetts’ law. MA’s law presumed that the problem was that healthy younger workers were choosing not to buy coverage, and were therefore depriving health insurers of the funds needed to adequately cover older and sicker people without huge price increases. The truth is, twenty-somethings struggling with the cost of college; struggling with the cost of buying, repairing, maintaining, insuring, and driving a car; struggling with their sub-twenty-thousand-dollar incomes; and trying to lay the foundation for the rest of their lives.

Thirdly, those who think government subsidies will do the job needs to turn their brains in for refunds, since they are not using them. Government subsidy programs come with all manner of verification requirements and little details that exclude otherwise-eligible people from consideration. It is true in Social Security, and in Medicaid, and in school lunches, and even in student financial aid for those attending college.

I can tell you from experience what is likely to happen: those who are already struggling will not buy medical insurance, because the additional costs would mean missing their car payments or skipping meals or wearing clothing that shows private personal body parts. Or, my favorite, skipping utility payments. Ooh, here’s one I forgot: being forced to move back into mom and dad’s place, because that’s the only way they can afford to pay their bills.

Unfortunately, not everyone who will be skipping payments is fresh out of high school. Thirty, forty, and fifty year-olds are also working for hugely profitable but low-paying companies, too. It sounds funny to hear it, but the reason I cannot support this proposal is because it takes money out of people’s pockets to give to the insurance companies, the very same insurance companies whose mess we are trying to fix.

I do have to say that all the ultra-conservatives who are calling this “socialized medicine” need to put down their crack pipes. Requiring citizens to purchase the services of certain favored corporations is the farthest thing from socialism. If anything, it is a step toward fascism.