AARP Part 5: The big payoff from Obamacare UPDATE: Video

Well, this won’t surprise any of you who read this blog on a regular basis. But it is stunning, isn’t it ,when you see the ultimate figures? The Sound Off Sister already talked about this here, and now we know that the payoff to AARP from Obama care is even greater than we had thought before. No wonder they supported. 

The Republicans, bless their hearts, yesterday released a report that digs deep into how AARP will benefit financially from the new Obama care law. And when I say benefit financially I mean benefit financially.

  • AARP is in fact a large, complex and sophisticated organization with over $2.2 billion in total assets and had revenues in excess of $1.4 billion in 2009 alone.
  • AARP has four primary revenue sources: royalty payments (primarily from insurance companies), membership dues, publication advertising and grants (governmental and non-governmental). In 2009, AARP revenues from royalties were two and half times higher than its membership dues.
  • Since 2002, income generated from AARP membership dues has increased 32%, or $60 million. However, during this same period, income derived from AARP’s business relationships, primarily with insurance companies, has nearly tripled, increasing by $417 million.  Royalty payments from for-profIt’sit companies comprised nearly 46% of AARP’s revenue in 2009, while membership dues totaled just 17% of total revenues.
  • As a result of the new health care law, the Obama Administration estimates more than 7 million seniors will lose their current Medicare Advantage plans, resulting in a massive migration of seniors to Medigap plans.  AARP is the nation’s leading provider of Medigap plans and has a contract in which AARP financially gains for every additional Medigap enrollee.
  • Based on low, mid and high-range estimates, AARP stands to financially gain, over and above the millions of dollars they currently receive from United, between $55 million and $166 million in 2014 alone as a result of new Medigap enrollees stemming from the health care law’s cuts to MA, which AARP strongly endorsed.

In other words, AARP through seniors under the bus for a mere a billion dollars?

 Under the midrange estimate and under their current contract, AARP’s financial gain from the health care law could exceed $1 billion during the next 10 years. This is because AARP will see their royalty payments increase as seniors are forced out of MA plans and buy AARP Medigap plans instead.

Well Republicans can smell a rat. And that’s exactly what we have here which is why according to hot air Republicans are calling for an IRS investigation into AARP. It’s about time.

AARP lobbied for the new health care law and now it stands to profit, Republican lawmakers charged Wednesday as they called for the IRS to investigate whether the powerful interest group representing older Americans should be stripped of its federal tax exemption.

Three veteran GOP representatives released a report that estimates the seniors lobby could make an additional $1 billion over 10 years on health insurance plans whose sales are expected to pick up under the new law. They also questioned seven-figure compensation for some AARP executives.

AARP will get their chance to answer the charges on Friday. It should be entertaining my little mobsters.

UPDATE: Here’s the Foc report on this from last night:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuD1l562mGI

 

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Jim Vicevich

Jim is a veteran broadcaster and conservative/libertarian blogger with more than 25 years experience in TV and radio. Jim's was the long-term host of The Jim Vicevich Show on WTIC 1080 in Hartford from 2004 through 2019. Prior to radio, Jim worked as a business and financial reporter for NBC30 - the NBC owned TV station in Hartford - and as business editor at WFSB-TV in Hartford for 14 years while earning six Emmy nominations and three Telly Awards.

9 Comments

  1. Plainvillian on March 31, 2011 at 3:16 am

    The socialist Mussolini coined the word 'totalitarianism' when he appropriated business into a socialist government.  We should be surprised by this after Government Motors, Government Electric, and Government Finance?



  2. winnie888 on March 31, 2011 at 3:23 am

    AARP is full of crap…their mission is clearly one of making gross amounts of profit off of seniors thanks to Obamacare.  They absolutely should be investigated and at the very least lose their not-for-profit status.

    And we were all supposed to jump on the bandwagon when private insurance companies were demonized as profit-mongering whores?  Please.  This absolutely reeks of conflict of interest.



  3. sammy22 on March 31, 2011 at 6:28 am

    WOW: Mussolini was a socialist? Well, that is REALLY revisionist history!



  4. Dimsdale on March 31, 2011 at 7:33 am

    AARP: Advocating Assaults on Retirees for Profit.



  5. TomL on March 31, 2011 at 8:12 am

    I’m left wondering what the AARP does with its money.



  6. sammy22 on March 31, 2011 at 12:45 pm

    @Plainvillian: Mussolini founded the Fascist Party in Italy. What he was in his younger days days little relevance to being the Dictator of what was Fascist Italy from 1922 until the end of WWII. I should know, I lived there.



    • Dimsdale on April 1, 2011 at 5:59 am

      Then the analogies to the current situation should be obvious to you.



  7. sammy22 on April 1, 2011 at 6:07 am

    What analogies? That a fascist is a socialist in disguise? Or the other way around?



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