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The AARP Loses Its Memory Over Raids On Medicare

While AARP opposes Republicans’ children’s health insurance subsidies because it limits Medicare benefits for wealthy seniors, it endorsed Obamacare, which did the very same thing.

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Based on its statements the past few weeks, if Obamacare extended to non-profit organizations, AARP might need to seek coverage for memory loss. While the seniors’ group opposes House Republicans’ extension of children’s health insurance because it includes provisions means-testing Medicare benefits for wealthy seniors, the Obamacare legislation it endorsed in December 2009 did the very same thing.

Obamacare Included Means-Testing

A letter the AARP sent to the House Energy and Commerce Committee last week objected to the House’s proposals to increase Medicare means-testing, noting that wealthy seniors already pay a greater share of their Part B (outpatient care) and Part D (prescription drug) premiums. That statement is true—in part because of Obamacare, which AARP endorsed.

Section 3402 of that law increased the number of affluent individuals subject to means-testing for Part B premiums, by freezing the inflation measure used to calculate the means-testing thresholds from 2010 through 2019. With no annual adjustment for inflation this decade, more seniors will find themselves with income exceeding the threshold limits.

In addition, Section 3308 of Obamacare applied means-testing for affluent seniors to the Part D prescription drug program for the first time.

Obamacare Used Medicare Savings

Last week’s AARP letter also claimed that “not only is it wrong to continue to ask Medicare beneficiaries to shoulder the burden for non-Medicare expenditures, but it will make it harder to finance actual improvements and address long-term challenges in the Medicare program.” That statement contains no small amount of irony, considering that Obamacare, as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi herself admitted, “took half a trillion dollars out of Medicare in [Obamacare], the health care bill”—to spend on new entitlements.

Moreover, by using savings from the Medicare Part A (hospital insurance) trust fund, Obamacare gamed the accounting to make the program’s shortfalls look less severe. When then-Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius was asked whether the Medicare savings were being used “to save Medicare, or to fund health reform [Obamacare],” Sebelius replied, “Both.”

Some would argue that Obamacare’s financial chicanery has actually undermined Medicare’s solvency by giving lawmakers an excuse to postpone needed reforms. While this year’s Medicare trustees report claimed the Part A trust fund would become insolvent in 2029, the last trustees report released prior to Obamacare measured the program’s insolvency date at 2017—this year.

If it weren’t for the double-counting in Obamacare—a bill that AARP proudly endorsed—lawmakers would likely be confronting Medicare’s structural deficits this year. Instead, comforted by the false hope of Obamacare’s accounting gimmicks, Congress seems unlikely to embark on comprehensive Medicare reform to solve those deficits in the near future, which will only exacerbate the impact of legislative changes when they do take place.

The history of Obamacare lends support to AARP’s current argument that Medicare savings not finance other government spending. But given its own history in supporting Obamacare, AARP seems singularly unqualified to make it.