What is AARP?

[Franz Kafka]

I understand it's a non-profit organization for seniors. I'm thinking about selling Medicare Supps/MAs to my existing senior clients. I've noticed many of em have AARP. Are they doing business as a carrier? How do their policies stack up against other For-profit carriers? Should I seek an appointment with them (in CA)?

 

[patch36]

They have a for profit side that rakes in hundreds of millions a year for endorsing the highest bidder. They are not an insurance company and are selling their name only. This year it is UnitedHealthCare that handles their MA and Med Sups, which is the most disorganized and poorly run sales organization in the MA business. In my area they have virtually no network and their plans suck. What they rely on is the AARP name and the gullibility of the senior market. That is my 2 cents worth of advice, and it is worth what you paid for it.

 

[Franz Kafka]

They have a for profit side that rakes in hundreds of millions a year for endorsing the highest bidder. They are not an insurance company and are selling their name only. This year it is UnitedHealthCare that handles their MA and Med Sups, which is the most disorganized and poorly run sales organization in the MA business. In my area they have virtually no network and their plans suck. What they rely on is the AARP name and the gullibility of the senior market. That is my 2 cents worth of advice, and it is worth what you paid for it.

Thanks Patch. It should be a relatively easy rollover then?

 

[moonlightandmargaritas]

I understand it's a non-profit organization for seniors. I'm thinking about selling Medicare Supps/MAs to my existing senior clients. I've noticed many of em have AARP. Are they doing business as a carrier? How do their policies stack up against other For-profit carriers? Should I seek an appointment with them (in CA)?

AARP - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Newby]

I understand it's a non-profit organization for seniors. I'm thinking about selling Medicare Supps/MAs to my existing senior clients. I've noticed many of em have AARP. Are they doing business as a carrier? How do their policies stack up against other For-profit carriers? Should I seek an appointment with them (in CA)?

Basically AARP was a gimmick that was formed by Colonial Penn Life Insurance Company to sell overpriced policies to seniors. It was split up in the 1980s after it was exposed on 60-minutes.

Now it takes bids from insurance companies about who they will endorse.

It has worked VERY well because some seniors still believe it is a group that looks out for the interest of seniors.

Read more about them here:
Amazon.com: Trust Betrayed: Inside the Aarp: Dale Van Atta: Books

or here:
Amazon.com: AARP:, The: America's Most Powerful Lobby and the Clash of Generations: Charles Morris: Books

 

[Guest]

It has worked VERY well because some seniors still believe it is a group that looks out for the interest of seniors.

I'm a member of AARP. I would not buy their insurance but they DO a lot of excellent advocacy for seniors, they publish two excellent magazines, and they have excellent member benefits and discounts.

Tell me who looks out for the best interests of senior citizens? Oh silly me, it's the insurance industry. Of course. How could I have missed that?

And of course all seniors are stupid and senile, right? It's a good thing you don't work the senior market. You would stave with your attitude.

The Jackass

 

[GPaq17]

I understand it's a non-profit organization for seniors. I'm thinking about selling Medicare Supps/MAs to my existing senior clients. I've noticed many of em have AARP. Are they doing business as a carrier? How do their policies stack up against other For-profit carriers? Should I seek an appointment with them (in CA)?

Funny thing is how Seniors are drawn to the name. Secure Horizons/AARP (That's what's out here in So California) has their logo plastered all over everything. As soon as the Senior sees the name, that is all they ask about. It's not one of the better plans that I cover, but I try to use it to transition into the Evercare product. If you do AARP, you should have Evercare if it's available in your area. Evercare is also owned by UHC. They pulled Evercare SNP plans late this year, but hopefully they will bring it back for 09.

Good Luck,
George

www.Ameriquote.net

 

[patch36]

Evercare has the same horrible network in my market that Secure Horizons has. I know it is ok in some areas, but in the my market it is not a good plan and has a very small network. It is going to depend on your market, but don't be mislead by the AARP endorsement. Compare plans and networks, then decide.

 

[Newby]

I'm a member of AARP. I would not buy their insurance but they DO a lot of excellent advocacy for seniors, they publish two excellent magazines, and they have excellent member benefits and discounts.

Tell me who looks out for the best interests of senior citizens? Oh silly me, it's the insurance industry. Of course. How could I have missed that?

And of course all seniors are stupid and senile, right? It's a good thing you don't work the senior market. You would stave with your attitude.

The Jackass

Al,

Once again you open your mouth and prove your ignorance.

1. I did not say there is ANYONE who looks out for seniors. I don't see seniors as ignorant as a group at all. 20-year olds need someone looking out for them more than the average senior does.
2. I work exclusively in the senior market. I've done so for 12-years straight. I haven't starved yet. In fact, I'm getting quite fat.
3. I didn't say I oppose joining AARP for discounts and the magazines. I see that membership as a loss leader for AARP to get their marketing list. I recommend taking advantage of any vendor's loss leader item. Just don't get sucked into the sucker items.
4. Which FACT in my post do you dispute? That AARP was started by an insurance agent as a marketing angle to sell insurance that was overpriced? That he also started Colonial Penn Life Insurance Company and ran the companies as one but marketed them like AARP was separate from Colonial Penn and "approved" their products? That Andy Rooney of 60-minutes busted their scam wide open? That the feds came in and got involved and forced AARP and Colonial Penn to separate after the 60-minutes story? What part of that is not documented well enough for you AL? Do you have some insider information the rest of us don't know about?

 

[Newby]

For anyone who hasn't read the history of AARP, here is a short version from Andy Rooney of 60-minutes.


THERE'S GOLD IN THE OLD

There's big money in old folks if you get enough of them to buy your product. No organization knows this better than the AARP, the American Association of Retired Persons, with thirty-five million members.

I'm plenty old enough to belong to the AARP—they've reduced the age requirement to fifty—but I've never joined. I'm prejudiced against the AARP because of the bad start it got. People tell me all that is in its dark past and I know it's unfair but my negative feeling about the gigantic association won't go away.

The AARP was started in 1958 by an insurance salesman named Leonard Davis after he met an elderly woman named Ethel Percy Andrus, who had been working to help teachers with medical insurance through an organization called The National Association of Retired Teachers.

Davis recognized a good thing when he saw it and realized the market for insurance sales to old people wasn't limited to teachers. He wanted to expand it to include "persons" so he put up $50,000 to establish the AARP.

This was not an eleemosynary institution. Andrus's interest was old people; Davis's interest was money. He put together the Colonial Penn Insurance Company which he made certain, through several legal maneuvers, was in firm control of the AARP. He then started using it, through its magazine Modern Maturity, as a sales tool for insurance policies.

Leonard Davis made hundreds of millions of dollars from the sale of insurance policies to AARP members. For several years, Colonial Penn was the single most profitable company in the United States, even though the policies it sold to AARP and NRTA members were rated "poor."

Davis's plan was a deviously ingenious sales scheme. The AARP was not much more than a front for his insurance company. At local AARP meetings around the country, volunteers set up desks to sell insurance. They didn't even have to pay salespeople. They conned members into thinking they were doing charitable work. The AARP office in Washington did not even have a list of its own members. That membership was kept under lock and key in the offices of the Colonial Penn Insurance Company.

After a 60 Minutes report exposing all this was broadcast in 1978, the AARP got rid of Colonial Penn and signed up with the Prudential Insurance Company.

Just last week the AARP ended its eighteen-year association with Prudential and has given its 64 billion contract to the United Health Care Corporation. I know nothing about the arrangement except you can bet that the AARP will be taking a 3 percent kickback from every single premium its members pay. Nothing illegal there. It's just that I still have a bad taste in my mouth.

People have told me of the good things the AARP does and I believe them. Cyril Brickfield, a lawyer and an important part of the Leonard Davis machine that so efficiently ran the AARP for its own profit, finally left a few years ago with an exit fee so large the AARP won't say what it was.

The AARP's current executive director is a former Catholic priest and longtime AARP employee named Horace Deets. He was hired twenty years ago by Harriet Miller, then the director, who was fired when she openly disapproved of what Leonard Davis was doing.

She won a $445,000 lawsuit against the AARP and is now, of all things, mayor of Santa Barbara, California. Leonard Davis lives in Florida. I don't think they exchange greeting cards.

People speak highly of Deets but I am not at ease with anyone who accepted the heavy hand of Leonard Davis for so long.

The most prickly thorn in the AARPs side now is Sen. Alan Simpson. The AARP enjoys tax exemption and nonprofit mailing privileges that amount to millions of dollars a year and Simpson has tried to have them taken away. He claims that AARP publications and mailings are ads for their many business enterprises and should be taxed and that their mailings should bear stamps like any other for-profit company's mail.

The AARP does have a lot of income-producing sidelines. As a small example, AARP members get a reduced rate if they rent a car from Hertz or Avis and the AARP, in turn, collects 5 percent of what members pay the rental company. It's still a good deal for members.

Simpson's opponents claim his is a political vendetta being waged against the AARP because he feels the organization has generally supported Democratic causes. In view of this criticism, which they don't to want to spread and ruin their lobbying efforts in Congress, the AARP has been neutral to the point of paranoia during the current Presidential race.

Maybe I'll join the AARP when they lower the age limit to forty-five.