Some are reporting that the AARP is set to not just endorse ObamaCare, but the giant, radical House health care bill in particular.  Now we all know that the AARP can always be counted on to support anything that promises to ingratiate its members at the expense of the rest of the country, but why would they back something that would take hundreds of billions out of Medicare and destroy the Medicare Advantage plan, something that 25% of seniors rely on, entirely?

As always, follow the money.  The fact is that the AARP, through UnitedHealthcare, offers “Medicare supplement plans,” that essentially do the same job that Medicare Advantage does now, only the AARP gets a cut from each customer, plus the membership fee.  Right now, those plans only cover 2.8 million people, but you can be sure that those numbers will skyrocket once their main competitor drops the over 10 million customers they have amassed.  For the seniors who will lose their Medicare Advantage coverage thanks to Obama, but lack the resources to buy the AARP’s alternative?  Tough luck.  I guess we’d all better off if they would just learn to “die with dignity.”

Better yet, since Medicare does all of the dirty work for them, these plans will largely be exempt from the new Obama health care regulations.  Even if the government option managed to drive out all private insurers, both the AARP and United would be able to stay in the insurance business, since this is only a supplement, not a true insurance offering.  Plus, since the public option would also be pretty deficient when it comes to the business of actually providing decent health care, you can be sure that they would be willing to generously offer “public option supplement plans” (at reasonable rates, obviously) when the time comes.

It’s a shame that the AARP would squander any goodwill they have built up over time to support something that we know will be a terrible deal for seniors (not to mention everyone else) just to make a quick buck.  Although, to be fair, part of me is a little satisfied that at least someone has figured out how to make money off of the latest big government boondoggle, I just wish the AARP’s entrepreneurial initiative didn’t come at the expense of the people that business and the government are supposed to represent.

Since it seems likely that the Democrat’s health nationalization plan will include the so-called “public option,” I wanted to put down a number of questions that need to be asked to determine if the public plan would be competing fairly with real insurance companies, or if it is, as it seems, a stealth attempt to slowly build a single-payer regime.  [I will probably miss some, so feel free to add to this in the comments.]

1. Will the public plan receive a subsidy?  In other words, will non-members be taxed to benefit this one plan’s customers?
2. Will the public plan pay the same corporate taxes and tax rates as other insurance companies?
3. Will the public plan be subject to the same patchwork of state regulations as every other insurance company, or will it play by its own rules?
4. Will the employees of the plan participate in any government employee programs, be subject to public union rules, or benefit from public employee bargaining?
5. Will the public plan share any HR, purchasing, or other infrastructure with existing federal agencies? Will it build or acquire its own office or offices, and will it pay for its own utility and IT usage?
6. Will the public plan be subject to any existing marketing restrictions?
7. Will public officials be allowed to advocate for the public plan over private competitors?  Will public health organizations steer customers toward the public option?
8. Will the public plan be subject to the same financial reporting requirements?

If Obama and the other Democrats are telling the truth when they say that they are not trying to dismantle the health insurance industry, I hope they’ll use this as a guide to what they should avoid.  As I think I have made it obvious, it would be very easy to accidentally give a substantial advantage to a public option, and I’m sure they wouldn’t want to do that. Alternatively, disinterested observers in the media (of which there are many, as we know) could use this as a checklist to see whether the Democrats’ rhetoric is matching the reality of their legislation.