AARP is an organization that purports to represent seniors 50 years of age and older, but who do they really represent?
By Rick Manning
It might surprise people to learn that AARP members sign up to be marketed to by one of the largest insurance companies in America – United Healthcare. And that AARP earned more than $1 billion dollars from royalties from this health insurer and other partners according to their 2020 tax reporting documents. Of these royalties, it is estimated that hundreds of millions came from their partnership with United Healthcare.
So the question any AARP member might ask is whose side is this multi-billion dollar “non-profit” on?
This is particularly true when one finds out that AARP is busily carrying water for big insurance concerns like United Healthcare when it comes to the issue of federal government prescription drug price setting.
Traditionally, seniors have been amongst the largest beneficiaries of advances in medical care whether it be better medical devices that solve mobility issues, or more efficient medicines and cures which extend quality of life. And no one can miss the obvious fact that the long private research effort dedicated to conquering Alzheimer’s Disease is one of the most important senior health issues facing America.
Yet, AARP’s fronting for their health insurer benefactor bottom lines runs directly counter to the health interests of their members.
Let me be clear. Medicare dictating the prices that will be paid for medicines seniors can get will result in seniors not getting the medicines that their doctors have decided work best for them. It will also significantly limit investment in developing new medicines that would be covered under Medicare should the federal government gain the power to effectively decide the price of medicines.
On the medicine availability issue, we already see this regularly at the state government level where drug formularies determine which medicines people on Medicaid may receive. It doesn’t matter if the ‘approved’ medicine works well for that individual patient, it only matters that it costs the government less to provide. And in many cases, these formularies are changed regularly to reflect annual or semi-annual negotiations, leaving patients to switch medicines due to the not-so-tender mercies of government bean counters instead of their doctors who know best what works for them.
If anyone thinks, after the last two years of the COVID debacle that one-sized fits all medical systems make sense, they haven’t been paying attention. Yet that is exactly what Congress would open the door to happening should they allow Medicare to negotiate prices with the obvious end result of pushing seniors into the least expensive treatment alternatives regardless of individual patient’s interests.
But an even more devastating outcome of this Medicare pricing scheme will be the drying up of research money for medicines intended to expand quality of life for seniors. New medicines cost more money, and all the FDA approvals in the world won’t mean a thing if the price bureaucrats won’t allow new treatments to be sold for a profit.
There are those who want people to believe that companies would spend billions of dollars in research to bring new innovative medicines for seniors to market under a Medicare price control regime. Of course, they are the same people who argued that our nation could increase our national debt by trillions without any fear of inflation. They are wrong on both accounts, but fortunately, legislation has not yet passed the Senate to impose deadly Medicare drug price controls under the guise of negotiations.
Which brings us back to AARP, and their willing push for a Medicare pricing scheme that provides pricing certainty to their big insurance partners, while doing violence to their members hope for the development of future cures and the ability to readily receive the medicines their doctor deems in their best health interest.
An article from earlier this month by Kaiser Health Network quotes Joshua Gordon, the director of health policy for the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget as stating about AARP’s position on drug price controls, “It’s hard to know whether they’re advocating for their business interests or for the seniors that they are supposed to represent.”
Maybe it is hard for Mr. Gordon to know, but the answer should seem pretty obvious to the rest of us.
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The Uvalde Police Chief’s Latest Excuse Is Absolutely Sickening -- and stupid
He’s trying to spin the narrative to get away from his pathetic and incompetent response to the active shooter who invaded a Uvalde elementary school and methodically murdered children and teachers.
Here’s his latest excuse reported by The Texas Tribune:
Only a locked classroom door stood between Pete Arredondo and a chance to bring down the gunman. It was sturdily built with a steel jamb, impossible to kick in.
He wanted a key. One goddamn key and he could get through that door to the kids and the teachers. The killer was armed with an AR-15. Arredondo thought he could shoot the gunman himself or at least draw fire while another officer shot back. Without body armor, he assumed he might die.
“The only thing that was important to me at this time was to save as many teachers and children as possible,” Arredondo said.
The chief of police for the Uvalde school district spent more than an hour in the hallway of Robb Elementary School. He called for tactical gear, a sniper and keys to get inside, holding back from the doors for 40 minutes to avoid provoking sprays of gunfire. When keys arrived, he tried dozens of them, but one by one they failed to work.
Our friends from ‘The Gateway Pundit’ commented further:
I am not Monday morning quarterbacking. In my previous life, I supervised the U.S. State Department’s Anti-Terrorism Assistance Training Program. The courses offered included training foreign police SWAT teams. In 1992 I traveled to Quito, Ecuador with the head of Miami’s SWAT team, Bill O’Brien (Bill later became Chief of Police for Miami, Florida) to conduct an evaluation of Ecuador’s SWAT team (Grupo de Intervencion y Rescate). I learned a lot from Bill. (I also learned to not go jogging with him in Quito, which sits at 9,350 feet above sea level. He almost killed me, but I survived the run.)
Why did Pete Arredondo not grab a shotgun loaded with slugs to breach the door? I find it hard to believe that none of the police on scene or nearby did not have a shotgun. Here is what American Cop has to say about the utility of a shotgun as a breaching tool:
When it is properly employed, a shotgun can provide teams with safer and faster door breaching than other methods of breaching. It is not limited to just doors. Shotgun breach can also be employed to breach iron-barred windows, and take out sliding glass doors and defeat padlocks.
Utilizing a shotgun for breaching offers tactical teams several advantages. It is quicker than manual breaching, jamb spreading or ramming and is safer and requires less training than thermal and explosive entry.
Watch it here: TacticalRifleman/Youtube
This tale that Arredondo told the Tribune contains some huge reversals and contradictions. Too many witnesses have described the police standing around outside the school for at least forty minutes. But now the chief is saying that he was trying to enter the classroom and stop the shooter from the moment he arrived but was thwarted by a lack of keys.
It just seems obvious that he knows precisely how bad this looks for him and the national attention being drawn to his failure to respond to an active shooter situation as standard training would suggest is making matters worse.
He’s trying to shift the blame for the deaths of all those students and teachers and make himself out as a would-be hero who was tragically thwarted by logistics. And I’m not buying it for a minute.
https://dailyallegiant.com/the-uvalde-police-chiefs-latest-excuse-is-absolutely-sickening/
**************************************************Liberal Lunatics Broke Into Joel Osteen’s Church And Stripped Down During Service
Abortion-rights activists shouted at the top of their lungs and stripped down to their underwear during a mega-church service held by prominent televangelist Joel Osteen in Houston on Sunday.
One protester took off her dress to reveal a pair of green hands painted onto her white bra and exclaimed, “It’s my body, my (expletive) choice,” as Pastor Joel Osteen finished his prayer and worshippers began to take their seats.
That protester was quickly joined by a woman standing next to her, who unveiled a similar outfit.
“Overturn Roe?” she chanted. “Hell no!”
A third protester joined the two women. As they were led through a surprised but seemingly calm crowd, the group continued to shout. From the stage, Osteen continued to talk.
The three women waved green bandanas — a symbol of the pro-choice movement.
Activist refers to the 1973 Supreme Court ruling Roe v. Wade, which established a legal right to abortion. According to a recently leaked Supreme Court draft, the increasingly conservative court, which includes three justices chosen by former President Donald Trump, might overturn the decision.
The Catholic News Agency claims he said:
“Alright y’all, we love everybody so we just thank the Lord that he’s in control and he has all things in his hand, and I think as long as I keep talking you can’t hear what everybody else is saying.”
The women were removed from the church, allowing Osteen to continue preaching, to the delight of the congregation.
According to the site, the activists continued their protest outside and were joined by other sympathizers.
Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights, a group of activists has opposed the idea of the Supreme Court reversing Roe v. Wade. v. Wade after a draft decision was released last month.
Activist Julianne D’Eredita told KPRC 2 of the protest:
“I know it seems very outrageous to do it in a church in a private space. However, the people that are enforcing these laws have no qualms coming up to women in private spaces such as doctors’ offices and medical clinics to harass them and call them murderers.”
Among the tweets Osteen posted Sunday was one telling his congregants that messages come in different forms.
“We don’t always realize how God speaks to us,” he said. “But most of the time, God speaks to us in a gentle whisper. It’s not something loud; it’s not forceful. It’s called the still small voice.”
Osteen, 59, has two children. The Christian Post quoted him saying “Every baby should live,” during a 2011 interview though that doesn’t seem to be an issue he often addresses. Osteen will preach in Yankee Stadium on Aug. 6.
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California Pride...?
Children in Los Angeles came across Drag Queens throwing lube while exposing bare breasts and male buttocks at the weekend’s Pride Month parade.
Sky News Australia broadcast censored footage of the event.
Australia’s equivalent parades take place at other times of the year, but many Australian governments have promoted the global festival throughout June.
For instance, the streets of inner Sydney are decked with taxpayer-funded rainbow flags, but few understand the consequences of buying into this political symbol.
Mainstream Australians support dignity and non-discrimination for same-sex attracted people so they can get on with their lives, something most want to do without fuss. But it’s quite another thing for mainstream Australians and their children to be forced to celebrate Pride Month and pay for aspects of it through their taxes.
After all, the 1970s rallying cry of the gay rights movement was ‘what happens in the privacy of the bedroom is no one else’s business’.
If only that’s where the political activists left things…
For the duration of June, global Pride Month fosters gender fluidity and radical sexual expressionism onto the rest of the population, including (and especially) children.
We’ve seen all this at Sydney’s Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade held in March each year. Like its LA counterpart, it’s not a family-friendly event.
Victoria’s taxpayer-funded ‘Pride Centre’ in St Kilda is also hosting events this month, including for children who must be ‘accompanied by an adult’.
Since de-gendering marriage, there’s been an aggressive push in schools to indoctrinate children into gender fluid ideology, teaching them their gender was ‘assigned at birth’, not observed, and that it can be changed.
This is having consequences here and abroad.
The number of children and young people in America now identifying as transgender, (or who are confused about their biological gender), has more than doubled since 2017.
Australian statistics from our secretive gender clinics are hard to come by, but it is widely acknowledged Australia has an unprecedented epidemic of gender-confused children.
This comes as international and Australian medical experts urge caution before putting children on the pathway to puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgery related to the permanent alteration of breasts and genitals.
That hasn’t stopped politicians in Queensland, Victoria, and the ACT banning children from receiving help from anyone other than a therapist who will affirm LGBTQ+ gender-fluid ideology.
New South Wales and Tasmania are about to debate similar laws banning the tried and tested ‘watch and wait’ protocols that successfully helped children (who overwhelmingly grow out of gender confusion) avoid puberty blockers, hormones, or the gender surgeon’s scalpel.
Pride Month seeks to amplify gender fluid ideology and further normalise it.
US Vice-President Kamala Harris did her bit, posing for a photo on social media with a scantily clad person who appeared to a man presenting as a woman.
Another senior American politician, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, celebrated Pride Month by making an appearance on RuPaul’s Drag Race television program.
‘Your freedom of expression of yourselves in drag is what America is all about!’
This is something most parents concerned about Drag Queen Story Time events in public libraries might question.
Pelosi finished by saying, ‘God bless America!’ The rest of us mutter, God help America.
Meanwhile, still in the land of the free, the New York Post reports this week that $200,000 of taxpayer money is being spent sending LGBTQ+ drag queens into schools to indoctrinate children into gender fluid ideology, often without parents’ knowledge.
Pride Month is global and it is here. Even Woke corporates like ANZ are getting into the swing of things, folding Marxist Black Lives Matter movement imagery and LGBTQ+ flags into corporate logos.
A legitimate battle for equality before the law has been won, but LGBTQ+ political activism didn’t stop there.
Under the guise of tolerance, the movement demands affirmation, validation, and celebration for everything LGBTQ+.
Politicians and corporates kowtow. No one questions the agenda. None speak out.
So this June, when you see a rainbow flag hanging from a public lamppost in the Sydney CBD or lighting up the taxpayer-funded Pride Centre at St Kilda, remember that your child’s gender is fluid and you were a bigot to ‘assign’ his or her gender based on what the midwife observed at birth. (Or something.)
Happy Pride Month, mainstream Australia.
Perhaps it’s time to get involved in politics because politics sure is getting involved in your kids’ lives.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/06/california-pride
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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