Voter Info and AARP FYI
I came across this site: Voice of the Middle Class. They have organized the candidates by issue and voting record. They have created comparison tables by issue listing the solutions on the side and candidates across the top with a check mark if they support. They have tables by candidate for each issue. You can also see their voting record based on bills related to each issue. Seems like a nice place to start in understanding the differences. There are links to each candidates’ web page.
There is this article I thought would also be of interest: AARP position on Universal Health Care.
It is a collection of info via articles with links on AARP and their influence on the debate. It notes various other front organization they have teamed up with to keep the discussion moving toward private insurance. AARP and the Business Roundtable have joined with SEIU [Service Employees International Union] to form something called Divided We Fail. Divided We Fail is a corporate liberal answer to single payer.
We’re talking some big money here by AARP. Even AARP, which earned $379 million in royalties in 2005, mostly from health insurance sales, appears to favor universal public and private health care coverage…. AARP also said it would use $500 million of insurance sales revenue over the next decade to help people navigate the health care system, with a new counseling service.
One of their links is to an article in the Nation on the drive to privatize medicare.
However, after 2003 the government began shoveling huge sums of money into the Medicare Advantage plans to entice seniors to leave the traditional program-in effect subsidizing privatization… This year the government will pay insurers on average 12 percent more than it costs to provide the same benefits to people who stay in the traditional program, according to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC), an independent group that advises Congress. HMOs will get 10 percent more, but private fee-for-service plans will get a whopping 19 percent more, a subsidy that lets them offer rock-bottom premiums and lots of extras-at least for now.
All I can say in such a climate where hiding one’s true intentions can be done so easily is THANK GOD FOR NET NEUTRALITY!