The "Money" section of the NYTimes today has a great headline: "Et tu, AARP? Good Guys Cut 401(k)s, Too". The article, by Ron Lieber, may be good, but the headline stopped me in my tracks. It's clever, but the headline writer was too charitable.
AARP sold us out to Big Pharma with the Medicare Drug Act. My prescription prices DOUBLED way back when that little piece of legislative jiujitsu passed, and I quit AARP on the spot. "Good guys"? I don't think so. I haven't been able to bring myself to forgive them, either, despite their wonderful magazine.
But that's ok. Clarissa Pinkola Estes has a great section on forgiveness in her intriguing book, Women Who Run with the Wolves. Without trying to find the book in this place so I can look it up (a three-day job), this is the main thing I remember her saying about forgiveness: It happens in stages. You can't just "forgive" someone and feel all better all at once. Estes says the first stage of forgiving an injury is to quit obsessing over it. Just quit thinking about it endlessly. Makes sense to me. I guess I was getting past stage one with AARP, too. I'd pretty much forgotten all about them.
Except, since retiring, I've started to notice all the goodies you can get now with an AARP membership. About all an AARP card used used to get you was senior rates on movies and a 10% discount at certain hotel chains. Nowadays the senior rate on movies is the same as the matinee rate for everyone else. You have go to go a movie after 6 p.m. if you want the old folks' discount. That's too LATE!! I rarely go out after supper.
Still, there's lots more now for anyone with an AARP membership: you can get special prices or discounts on everything from cruises to cell phones to tow trucks.
Well, too bad. They still sound like their main goal is watching out for #1, never mind their constituents OR their workers. Fooey.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
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4 comments:
Yeah, I can never figure out what's the advantage of belonging to AARP. I can usually beat their discount rates on hotels, etc. on my own.
I canceled my AARP membership after that little fiasco, too. I haven't looked back. There are other publications worth more of my time and I don't like the fact that they basically sell medical insurance. I won't support them.
and here we are: three little maids who tore up our cards. AARP is bogus outfit, actually an insurance scheme with an overblown budget, staff. we were lulled into thinking they had concerns of old people in mind.
what now?
Have you seen the AARP website? The headquarters is maybe a block away from my home and so I checked it out looking for jobs. The published job descriptions sound like they were crafted by an inebriated HR late term drop out. And accepted by folks who sincerely wanna hire their bros or bros-in law. Lots in the way of verbiage, little in the way of job description.
Yet AARP was once quite excellent. I followed up on a touching CBS news piece about an extremely poor retired couple who had to pick up tossed tin cans to pay their bills. CBS said that AARP had actually provided the incentive for this story. I was impressed at the skill and bent of their p.r. to i-d this story for CBS and get it published. That was then.
Years later, "they went corporate," a friend explained.
Way went.
Cat
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