AARP is in the prescription drug business themselves.

[flpoljunkie]

AARP charges $183.64 for a 90 supply of 10mg Lipitor.

http://www.aarppharmacy.com/aarpNet/rx/rxDrugPrice.aspx?drug_key=102324&drug_name=LIPITOR+10MG+TABLET&brand=True

BC/BS State of Florida PPO mail order price through Caremark for 90 day supply is only $30--set to go up to $50 in January. Bush's Medicare bill expressly forbids the federal government from this kind of bulk buying for Medicare recipients.

Perhaps AARP has a conflict of interest, being in the prescription drug business themselves.

[BurtWorm]

1. I wonder if there's a way to get a group rate in a hurry

for people who want to drop AARP but have insurance policies through them. Are there alternatives to AARP out there, or does one have to be created from scratch? Sort of a Working Assets of a Retirement Association?

[madrchsod]

2. yes there is

was posted today-it`s a union org. for retired union members and anyone else

[madfloridian]

3. This may be what you mean.

http://www.retiredamericans.org

I am afraid the server is overwhelmed at the moment. They were starting to get calls early this morning.

[BurtWorm]

4. Yeah, that's probably what I mean

if I could just get to their Website!

[sandnsea]

5. AARP was started by an insurance agent

Back in the 1950's. It also contracts a medicare supplmental plan for its members. I don't know what the financial structure is, but let's not forget Liddy Dole made something like a million a year as head of the Red Cross. Nonprofit can be a great way for a social services type person to make a ton of money.

[Malva Zebrina]

6. It was founded at a time when senior citizens and the elderly had

little voice. It was the only voice and the only organisation that had any power at all at that time and it was hailed. Most seniors ran to join for that reason, I think.

It grew from that into an organisation that over the past couple of years has become cheap and obscene, imo. The magazine that it sends out to it's members is full of hype and glitzy advertisements. Pictures show elderly people all looking as though they are thirty, leaping over fences, riding bicycles on romantic trails in the wilderness, and running on the beach. I am not saying that one needs to get into a wheelchair and stay there, but those types of fantasies are beyond the reach of many of the elderly who are stricken with arthritis and other debilitating illnesses of old age. It has played into the fantasies of the elderly--the most vulnerable and exploited group in the population.

The last one had a model on the fron t page, famous one, can't remember her name,the one with the gap in her front teeth, and the blurb was that although she was sixty, she looked thirty, and you can do the same!! Most mature seniors are wisely, beyond that kind of hype I think--but maybe the Republican seniors are not and are still in that fantasy land where they think they look thirty if they dye their hair dark black and apply heavy makeup over their eyes--or, constantly pay out hundreds of dollars a month to have their skin tightened up. I would not put it past those types to have silicon breast implants to shore up the sag either.