Connection between AARP chief and fight against Clinton's health care plan

[T Roosevelt]

Wasn't there some connection here? That the AARP head led the propoganda against Clinton's attempt to streamline health care?

[swag]

1. This strikes me as highly doubtful

given the commitment of AARP to comprehensive health care reform throughout the mid and late 1980s and early 1990s. Look to Horace Deets, John Rother, and the entirety of AARP's volunteer leadership structure.


AARP didn't go retrograde until recently, and then only at HQ.

[T Roosevelt]

2. Found it

AARP President William Novelli, who decided last week to use his position to push the conservative Medicare privatization bill, is the founder of Porter Novelli - the firm that orchestrated the Harry and Louise ads that brought down health care reform in the 1990s. Novelli was an official in the Nixon Administration, and the firm he founded has a long history of producing conservative, anti-health care ads.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1125-01.htm

[Kanary]

3. If enough of us start agitating for Universal health care,

AARP will set up a HUGE fight, as they are a part of the *insurance* thugs.

Kanary

[swag]

4. Novelli did not become ED of AARP until 2001

As you may recall, the Clinton health care plan was formulated many years before that awful day.

[T Roosevelt]

6. I wasn't claiming it was he and AARP against Clinton's plan

I was only pointing out that he was involved in the propoganda against it (with the Harry and Louise ads). Now he's with AARP and had something to do with the Medicare plan.

[swag]

8. Sorry for misconstruing

[swag]

5. Further, Novelli's first AARP assignment was in 2000

in "public affairs."

If you have ever spent any time with the AARP Legislative Division, you'll know that there is not a group of people more commited to comprehensive health care coverage in the country.

God knows how the troglodyte made inroads, but he certainly doesn't represent the membership or the organization.

And I'm sure seniors are already rising up against him.

[KT2000]

7. AARP is essentially....

a an insurance company. It has morphed into an advocacy groups for the retired but much of that is myth and pr. It was initially set up to serve the insurance needs of the retirees.