Earlier this month, I reported that a revolt was breaking out among AARP’s 40-million members in response to the enthusiastic and extensive lobbying by the group’s Washington leadership on behalf of Obamacare. Now, other media are beginning to notice and we are starting to get a trickle of numbers that hint at the magnitude of the outrage among AARP’s members.
CBS News reported Monday that a top AARP official admits the organization has lost at least 60,000 members who specifically cited the Obamacare issue as their reason for leaving. And the CBS report also noted a spike in new membership at a conservative rival to the AARP, the American Seniors Association.
And today AP follows the CBS report with additional details, quoting AARP vice president for communications Drew Nannis saying the organization loses hundreds of thousands of members annually as part of a normal turnover process:
“‘We take stands on issues that are contentious, it’s part of what we do,’ Nannis said. ‘And because we have so many members we’ll always have a small percentage that disagree with us so strongly they feel they need to cancel membership.’
“The approximately 60,000 number represents members who specifically cited AARP’s stance on the health overhaul debate in canceling their membership between July 1 and mid-August, Nannis said. He said that on average AARP loses some 300,000 members a month, but he couldn’t say how many more members had quit for other reasons in that time period.
“He said AARP gained some 400,000 new members during the same period and that 1.5 million members renewed their membership.”
I suspect that Nannis is low-balling the numbers. When my July 30 column appeared predicting that Obamacare could be the death of AARP, it unleashed a torrent of present and former AARP members commenting in response about why they were or had already resigned from the organization.
Newspaper editors have an old rule of thumb that every letter to the editor represents 10 or more readers who have similar views. At one point last week, I counted more than 60 such comments. And that was just in The Examiner. Other media are clearly hearing the same thing from their viewers and readers.
No surprise at that in this corner. That’s why that July 30 column concluded with this observation: “In short, Obamacare means health care rationing for old folks, the sick and the terminally ill. There will be hell to pay for AARP with its members when this ugly reality becomes crystal clear, as it most certainly will.”
