AARP: The Bigger they are, the Harder they Fall

Giant Spider. Image © Jordi Martorell/Flickr

The AARP Spider Web of Interconnected Companies is Designed to Shuffle Hundreds of Millions of Dollars Around while Serving AARP’s Self-Interested Purposes.

Their Real Owner, UnitedHealth Group, is Drooling for Even More Dough.

Why are people still joining AARP? Their name has crept into our national vocabulary. This is no accident. It baffles the mind how their massive propaganda machine has brainwashed America’s senior masses (eligibility age now dropped to 50!) into forking over their hard earned—and retirement—money to one of America’s biggest public “charities” whose primary beneficiaries are themselves.

We plan to peel back as many of these layers of disguise as we possibly can. Our intent is to expose a skillful scheme which is decades old and stronger than ever today.

Santa Fe, New Mexico, 8 June 2015
By Dr. James Goldberg, Author of The American Medical Money Machine: The Destruction of Healthcare in America and the Rise of Medical Tourism

AARP is a sophisticated organization with billions in total assets. They’re also a top lobbying group in Washington. AARP spends more than $200 million a year on advertising and promotion to keep their grasp on the throats of the public. They are really masters at this game.

Congress has tried to blow their scheme open for years. In March 2011 a lengthy investigative report, “Behind the Veil: The AARP American Doesn’t Know”, was published by Representatives Wally Herger (R-CA) and Dave Reicher (R-WA), who were seeking to address a range of improprieties that appeared to conflict with AARP’s tax-exempt status.

The document digs deep into the workings of the AARP that have since become only more confounding. Their efforts turned into political chaos on the House floor a month later, where the argument about the authorship of the report—not its content—became a political football. When that died down, a debate ensued, with vacuous answers provided by AARP.

As a follow-up to the hearing, in December 2011, The House Ways and Means Committee asked the IRS for an investigation into AARP’s royalty free relationships with several businesses. We have not been able to find the outcome of the IRS investigation, if there even was one. A call to Dave Reichert’s office has gone unanswered.

Sadly, the IRS appears to have let this Congressional complaint die quietly. Instead, AARP has grown and continues to grow, unchecked, into a mammoth conglomeration. In fact, the IRS joined with AARP in some “public interest” program.

Their practices are appalling. Numerous interrelated yet separate tax-exempt companies, listed here below, spin a mind-numbing web that makes it nearly impossible to decipher what’s transpiring. We are slowly unraveling their shenanigans. Within the last two years or so, the unholy alliance between AARP and UnitedHealth Group has finally been admitted and broadcast through slick advertising to its 40 million members.

AARP is also enjoying new financial windfalls and subsidies from Obamacare on top of grants from the US government and even strategic alliances with the IRS. Wow, it helps to have friends in high places.

They shamelessly use advocacy for the elderly as a sales tool. Hey, how can you argue with someone who is taking care of grandma? AARP enjoys tax-free sailing via their powerhouse of tangled relationships between parent and subsidiaries making it very difficult to decipher their competing agendas. Nevertheless, we will get to the bottom of this cesspool.

Continue reading on The American Medical Money Machine.