AARP and ObamaCare: 'Community Conversation'

AARP is campaigning in Wisconsin for ObamaCare. "Community Conversations" are being held across the state to whip up support for Obama's government-run health care.

AARP is billing these events as an opportunity for its members to learn how AARP is "working to shape the health reform debate." People are encouraged to "share [their] own health care experience, ideas, and observations." AARP claims, "Your input and your action can have a powerful impact."

These events aren't conversations about health care. They're orchestrated efforts to push for socialized medicine.

If members are unable to attend the supposed "Community Conversation," AARP still wants their stories.

Share Your Story

How is the health system working for you? Are you worried about finding or keeping health coverage? Is your current health coverage affordable? Do you struggle to pay for prescription drugs? What has your experience been? Would you like to see changes in the health system? We want to hear from you...

Bring your story to share at the Community Conversation. If you are unable to attend you can still share your story by sending it to the AARP Wisconsin State office Attn: Jennifer Baier 222 West Washington Ave. Suite 600, Madison, WI 53703 or email it to aarpwi@aarp.org

AARP Wisconsin asks members for permission to share these personal health stories "with legislators, the media and online."

What exploitation!

Now, what are the odds that AARP Wisconsin would choose to share any stories that don't trash the current system?

Slim to none.

What is the chance that the "Community Conversation" events will inform seniors that they are going to lose in the Democrats' government-run plan of rationed care?

Zero.

Will AARP Wisconsin tell its members that Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, one of Obama's top advisers on health care, supports a system that prevents doctors from aggressively treating the illnesses of older Americans and is against measures to prolong the lives of the elderly?

From John Goodman's Health Policy Blog:

The only way to control health care costs is to get doctors to provide less care — fewer tests, fewer procedures, fewer everything. Of course, the Administration wants to eliminate only that care that is "unnecessary."

...[T]he Administration is proposing a new federal health board to decide whether health care services are "effective" or "appropriate."

...If health care is to be rationed, what's the right way to do it? Zeke Emanuel (who is also the brother of White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel) wrote an entire article on this subject in the Lancet on January 31, 2009. Emanuel advocated allocating health resources in order to maximize collective life years. Suppose a 25-year-old and a 65-year-old have a life threatening disease. Since the 25-year-old has many more potential years of life ahead of him, he should receive preferential treatment, says Emanuel. He justifies denying care to elderly patients in the following way:

The complete lives system discriminates against older people…. Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination; every person lives through different life stages rather than being a single age. Even if 25-year-olds receive priority over 65-year-olds, everyone who is 65 years now was previously 25 years.

There's more. In a different article written more than 10 years ago for the Hastings Center Report, Emanuel said health services should not be guaranteed to "individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens." He continues, "An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia."

I don't think AARP Wisconsin intends to share this part of the story at the "Community Conversation."

I am certain the cold consequences of ObamaCare and how that socialized system will impact the lives of AARP members will not be on the agenda.

AARP Wisconsin will not tell people about the analysis from the Heritage Foundation, conducted by The Lewin Group.

“If you like your health plan, you can keep it, the only thing that will change is that you’ll pay less.” Remember that? Well, according to the new Lewin study:

---Approximately 103 million people would be covered under the new public plan and as a consequence about 83.4 million people would lose their private insurance. This would represent a 48.4 percent reduction in the number of people with private coverage.

---About 88.1 million workers would see their current private, employer-sponsored health plan go away and would be shifted to the public plan.

---Yearly premiums for the typical American with private coverage could go up by as much as $460 per privately insured person, as a result of increased cost-shifting stemming from a public plan modeled on Medicare.

AARP Wisconsin will not be holding "Community Conversation" events.

The group will be holding propaganda events to convince its members to support a system that is not in their best interests.

AARP should be ashamed.