ShAARP Session: Observations from AARP

Dear Mr. Novelli,

I listen with great interest to all the attempts to make our health care more efficient and our health care cost more affordable.

In my estimation, though, we would have to address, before all else and with absolute frankness, the strain that a catastrophically overweighed general population puts on the system. A physician friend recently told me that 80% of his internal medicine practice are in some way obesity related. Our weight is crushing America and our health care system!

We have made great progress in this nation with our anti-smoking campaign. I think we can and should do the same when it comes to our obesity problem. The statistics are horrendous and yet, general sensitivity and kindness keep us from the outspokenness this matter would really require.

If AARP supports the draconian changes to Medicare, physician reimbursements and pharmacy coverage, then you are not representing me. Do you believe that those costs will not be recouped by the Medicare Advantage programs? We already have physicians retiring at earler ages than previous generations, the cost of pharrmacutical research must be recouped or it won't happen. Don't support the socialist agenda of the Obama adminisitration!

"You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it."

The late Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931 - 2005

Dear Jennie,
Your health care system article was articulate and specific and very informative. How can you persuade and convince the majority of Americans and many Republicans that improving our health care system is absolutely necessary for all citizens? Please continue to stress this issue in the upcoming months. You did well!!!!

Cheers for Rebecca Anderson. She is right on the money, something which will be in short supply for seniors after the socialists get through. AARP clearly needs new leadership.

How could anyone that has a brain think that having the government take over health care(and that is just what the reform movement wants to do) is a good idea must be wishing for a death pill. Already as a senior citzen you have a hard time finding a doctor that will take you as patient. I don't know how much healthier a life I must live: no smoking, no drinking, great BMI, yet I do know that does not prevent you from having a deadly illness. My husband died of cancer, my young father an aneurism, my aunt has breast cancer, my daughter fights chrohns disease. What are they talking about they want preventative measures. That just doesn't save your life. Medicare is broken. I will never see medicare as all the people I just mentioned had never seen. Keep me safe from nuclear war and terrorists then I might have a chance to live longer. No government program can ever do better, cheaper, faster or honestly than the one we already have. check out all the socialist countries' plans and see why when they are sick they go to a private care facility. Or to the United States. That should tell you something.

As an older citizen,age 73, I am appalled at your support for a clearly catastrophic health care plan. With age is supposed to come wisdom, and I can smell many rats in the Obamacare proposal. Can you name any program run by the government that has been successful? How about Social Security, or Medicare, or Amtrac, or Post Office, or whatever. A single payer plan will always lead to total control by a faceless, nameless political hack, and results the same as those in Canada, Spain, Italy, Germany or France. Long waits, inadequate treatment, early death for older persons, and huge costs. That is not what I worked and planned for all my life and I want more from my government, which in my case means little or no intervention while they defend my shores and deliver my mail. Stop supporting the democratic sponsored takover of the rest of my life.