The AARP

This is the story of how America's most powerful lobby overcame its shady origins to become an exemplary player in the great debate over the future of Social Security and Medicare.

The single, bone-crushing problem in American politics - now and for the next thirty years - is how big a share of the nation's economic pie should go to older people for income support and health care. The American Association of Retired Persons is the eight-hundred-pound gorilla of American politics, an organization made up of 32 million members, the most influential, single-minded voting bloc in the United States.

But few people know that the AARP was the brainchild of a budding insurance mogul, Leonard Davis, who made an estimated $200 million flogging high-priced health insurance to the elderly. This book chronicles the rise of the AARP and its fight to shed the vestiges of its unsavory beginnings to become a responsible player at the political table. It is also the first book to set out in clear and readable detail which AARP products are good buys and which ones consumers should avoid.

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This book takes a close look at the AARP, its financial and business activities, its service network, and its lobbying organization. It explores the structure and financing of senior entitlement programs, and pinpoints the winners and losers in the current system.

And, most important, this book analyzes the possibilities of reform and concludes that the continued growth of the health care sector ought not to be cause for undue alarm; in all probability, it will confer important benefits upon the rest of the economy. Indeed, the author proposes practical steps that will likely make the coming transition much easier than it otherwise might be.