OSCARS ALL AROUND:

AARP Support for Medicare Bill Came as Group Grew 'Younger' (SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and MILT FREUDENHEIM, 11/26/03, NY Times)

Critics question just who AARP represents, and whether the interests of the elderly — in particular those 65 and older, who are eligible for Medicare — are really being served. They do not understand how AARP, a group whose mission has long included protecting the Medicare program, could support a bill that includes experiments with private competition and a means test that will require wealthy people to pay a bigger share of their premium.

"We've always felt Medicare was very important and should not be means-tested and should not be privatized," Lovola Burgess, AARP's national president from 1992 to 1994, said. [...]

But with the aging of the boomers, AARP officials said, they decided they needed to pitch to younger members. They also brought younger people onto the board; at 64, Mr. Parkel said he is the youngest president AARP has ever had.

The membership age was lowered to 50 from 55 and, to shed the word "retired," the group shortened its name to AARP. This year, for the first time, Mr. Novelli said, a majority of AARP members still work.

Marilyn Moon, a former director of public policy for AARP, said it had also become politically bolder. "They want to be players in the political arena," she said. "They want to be considered partners with people in Congress," which, she said, means "working with Republicans."

That is bad news for Democrats, who have long counted on the elderly as a reliable voting constituency. Among those most angered by the endorsement was Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who has long worked with AARP on health care issues, but broke with it over the bill. "I think they didn't speak for their constituency on this one," Mr. Kennedy said.

If "fiscal conservatives" are right and this bill has no reform potential in it, the Left has done a brilliant acting job.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 26, 2003 9:25 AM