AARP aka GOD Carries Joe’s Water

Card carrying members of AARP aka GOD (Grand Old Democrats) watching savings evaporate as food & rent bills soar might want to know their leaders are pushing an inflationary-boondoggle aka “Anti-Inflation Act.”

So warns the WSJ’s Kimberley Strassel in “Whom Does AARP Serve?” According to the columnist: “The AARP, which claims to advocate policies that serve the interests of tens of millions of retirees, has gone all in for the giant tax-and-spend deal announced last week by Sen. Joe Manchin & Majority Ldr Chuck Schumer. The group’s particular focus is the provision that would allow the federal government to ‘negotiate’ Medicare drug prices [aka pick & choose winners & losers in just a handful of categories THEY favor] and cap annual increases [within those few categories] to inflation – though it is more than happy to also swallow the legislation’s tax hikes & climate spending.”

And, oh btw, Kimberley argues, the Democratic-AARP bill, while expanding THEIR powers & political influence over pharma [that just saved so many elders in the Covid Crisis], won’t really reduce most pharma costs, will make research for new drugs prohibitively costly and can likely contribute more fuel still to the skyrocketing inflation plaguing older Americans. Concludes Kimberley: “Most devasted would be the people AARP claims to represent. Nearly 90% of adults 65 and older take at least one prescription medication. More than half report taking four or more. The AARP’s price controls would mean horrific hits to research in cancer, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, you name it. This isn’t the Inflation Reduction Act. It’s the Lowering Life Expectancy Act.”