HOUSE SPEAKER NEWT GINGRICH met with Horace Deets, the executive director of the American Association of Retired Persons, last spring to discuss Medicare reform. They got together again over the summer, and then talked about Medicare for an hour in Gingrich’s office on September 11. When Deets tried to reach Gingrich in August, the speaker’s staff tracked him down during his book tour in Tennessee and hooked the two up by phone. Meanwhile, AARP lobbyist Martin Corry has been chatting regularly with Ed Kutler, Gingrich’s Medicare expert. “We have a lot of fun kidding each other,” says Corry.
All this camaraderie has produced exactly the result Gingrich wants. AARP, the nation’s most powerful lobby for seniors, has not joined Congressional Democrats in opposing the Republican plan for restructuring Medicare and saving $ 270 billion. In fact, practically no one except organized labor has signed on, preventing Democrats from putting together a coalition powerful enough to block sweeping changes in Medicare. AARP, which backed President Clinton in the losing fight on health care in 1994, is leery now of crossing Gingrich and Republicans. So is the American Medical Association. And so are hospital groups, which have raised strong objections but aren’t likely to mount a full-blown campaign against Republicans.
Gingrich “has done a great job of getting the opponents to sit on their hands,” concedes Tom Scully, who runs the Federation of American Health Systems, the lobbying arm of for-profit hospitals. Meanwhile, Gingrich has organized a coalition of his own for Medicare reform: insurance companies, the managed care industry, corporate groups like the Business Roundtable, and reliable GOP allies such as the Christian Coalition and the National Restaurant Association. That coalition is necessary but not sufficient to assure the revamping of Medicare. What’s also required is that foes be neutralized. Republicans aren’t too worried about opposition by hospitals, which aren’t popular. A top Republican official told the lobbyist for the American Hospital Association: “If we had to pick one opponent, you’d be the one.”
AARP wouldn’t be. Gingrich and other Republicans have gone to great lengths to mollify AARP. From the start, Gingrich insisted that Medicare savings not be drawn primarily from higher deductibles and copayments. Thus, monthly premiums will increase only $ 7 to $ 10 a month by 2002, Gingrich insists. Moreover, there are sweeteners for AARP in the Republican bill, so long as AARP doesn’t join the opposition. Among other things, the group may get the right to compete with private companies to sell health insurance to seniors under Medicare. Its insurance business is AARP’s largest source of revenue.
There’s a raw political reason for AARP’s skittishness about opposing Congressional Republicans. “They’re a traditional Democratic group,” says a GOP leader. “Their natural inclination is to gravitate toward where the power is. They want to be in the game.” AARP might prefer dealing with Democrats. ” But Democrats are offering absolutely nothing, no Medicare bill at all,” the official adds.
Besides, AARP doesn’t want to be on the losing side again, as it was on catastrophic health care in 1998 and on health care reform last year. When Gingrich offered to listen to AARP’s concerns, Deets jumped at the chance. He also agreed not to send John Rother, AARP’s legislative director, as his representative. Gingrich regards Rother as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Democratic party.
Without the muscle of AARP, Democratic opposition to Medicare reform has been lame. “Medicare is the one issue the left believes they can lie about and demagogue and scare, and we’ll crumble and they’ll win,” Gingrich told a House-Senate Republican conference on September 14. Last summer, Democrats claimed Republicans would boost Medicare premiums by $ 2,000 a year. They’ve trimmed that to $ 1,000.
Next to AARP, the most important exile from the Democratic side is Clinton. Unlike Congressional Democrats, he’s offered an alternative on Medicare. When Republican and Democratic leaders conferred with Clinton at the White House on September 11, the president ran down a list of issues on the fall agenda, pausing to note that something should be done to avert the Medicare trust fund’s bankruptcy. Republicans nodded in agreement. House Minority Whip David Bonior, the ideological czar among Democrats on Capitol Hill, didn’t say a word in the meeting. But he looked furious.
by Fred Barnes
