AARP

Do you remember the promises made by the Democratic Party’s presidential and Congressional candidates on universal health insurance? You can forget their pledges and somber convictions now that your votes put the Democrats in charge of the House and the Senate. The Democrats’ leaders are abandoning their promises and retreating into a cowardly corporatist future. […]

By Ralph Nader | November 21, 2019 While the Democratic presidential candidates are debating full Medicare for All, giant insurance companies like UnitedHealthcare are advertising to the elderly in an attempt to lure them from Traditional Medicare (TM) to the so-called Medicare Advantage (MA) – a corporate plan that UnitedHealthcare promotes to turn a profit […]

The Ryan/Trump tax plan (short version): over the long run, it raises taxes on the entire middle class while repealing health coverage for around 13 million people, all to give corporations and the 1% gargantuan tax cuts. No one should have expected anything else from these two serial liars.

A couple of months ago AARP ran TV ads warning of the dangerous to seniors inherent in TrumpCare. Now, they're about to spend over a million dollars to run more ads, this time targeting key Republican senators-- the 5 they ran ads against in May-- Jeff Flake (AZ), Lisa Murkowski (AK), Dan Sullivan (AK), Cory Gardner (CO) and Dean Heller (NV)-- plus 6 more: Chuck Grassley (IA), Joni Ernst (IA), Rob Portman (OH), Lamar Alexander (TN), Bob Corker (TN) and Shelley Moore Capito (WV).

You know who has a really big mailing list? AARP. For starters, they have over 37,000,0000 members. But they add people to their mailing list even before they become members. Yesterday I got a mailing from them. Inside the envelope were three petitions, one to each California senator and one to Adam Schiff, my congressman. Other than the names, they were identical:

A GOP bill in Congress could give employers access to employees’ personal medical and genetic information and increase financial penalties for people who reject workplace wellness programs. [1]
House Republicans have proposed this legislation that would make it easier for companies to gather DNA and health information from employees and their families – children included – when it’s collected as part of a ‘voluntary’ workplace wellness program. Debate still remains, however, on the effectiveness of such wellness programs in general. [2]

Boehner's revenge on the GOP's far right fringe?Yesterday afternoon brought word that Obama and Boehner had come close to reaching a deal to raise the debt limit until March 2017 and bust sequestration spending limits by $112 billion, split evenly between defense and domestic spending.