AARP president predicts new GOP health care plan will score ‘somewhat’ worse than original

Among the loudest critics of U.S. House Republican plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act this year has been the AARP.

“That plan would repeal the expansion of Medicaid that was voluntarily adopted by 31 states, some Republican and some Democratic, so that they could cover millions of poor people with good health insurance, including children, for Pete’s sake,” said AARP’s national President  Eric Schneidewind in an interview last week at the organization’s St. Petersburg offices.

“So about 10 million of those people would ultimately lose their insurance under this AHCA (American Health Care Act).”

As an advocacy group for the rights of people 50 and older, the AARP specifically takes issue with a provision in the recently passed House bill that raises rates people above 50 would have to pay, to a level of five times what a younger person would pay for insurance.

They also oppose a part of the plan that would deleteriously affect Medicare’s solvency.

When the ACA was passed in 2010, the Medicare Part A trust fund was forecast to be unable to meet anticipated costs by 2017. But because of higher Medicare taxes and premiums on higher earners in the ACA, its solvency has been extended until 2028.

However, the AHCA would propose eliminating the Medicare payroll tax for high earners while raising Medicare spending, the Part A trust fund would be insolvent four years earlier, Scheidewind says.

After reviewing the first House Republican health care bill (ultimately pulled off the floor), the Congressional Budget Office reported that 21 million would lose insurance by 2020; 24 million by 2024. On Wednesday, the CBO expects to announce its score for the latest version of the AHCA.

“We think the score will be somewhat worse than the original version,” said Schneidewind, who is halfway through his term as AARP president (a volunteer position).

An AARP analysis found that about 454,000 Floridians age 50-64 enrolled and receiving tax credits in the ACA marketplace would see higher health coverage premiums than they were paying under the current law, more than in any other state.

While some observers note the intensity of the organization’s opposition to the AHCA, he says it’s not exactly new territory for the group, citing similar efforts to oppose President George W. Bush‘s attempt to privatize Social Security in 2005, as well as the 2009 attempt to change the COLA formula for Social Security.

“AARP was founded to make sure that older Americans had affordable good quality health care coverage,” Schneidewind said. “That was our reason for coming into being. We have always fought hard.”

For years, the organization has consistently argued that Medicare be allowed to negotiate drug prices for million of Americans.

While progressives continue to push for a “Medicare-for-all” single-payer system to supplant the current private insurance system in America, Scheidewind said that the AARP reviewed “a number of different solutions” but hasn’t singled out a single solution.

It’s obvious that the American health care system is characterized by “radically higher administrative costs” than other places in the world, Schneidewind said.

“Livable communities” is another subject that the AARP has put a large number of resources into in recent years. It centers around the fact that many Americans, retirement needs to be made more affordable.

“It’s less expensive for somebody to age in their own dwelling and than to get the services than it is to go into an institution,  to a nursing home or something where the cost is typically three times what it would take to stay in your home,” Scheidewind said.

The issue is a critical one. Statistics show that, more than ever, elder Americans have less financial savings than previous generations heading into their golden years.

‘We need to find ways for them to stay in their communities and get the services they need and have the quality of life that they deserve,” Schneidewind said.

AARP lobbyists were busy in Tallahassee during the recently concluded regular Legislative Session. Although some health care related bills they supported did not pass during Session, they were exuberant over the failure of a bill allowing Florida Power & Light to charge customers for natural gas fracking activities in states outside Florida, like Oklahoma.