Gil Ziffer’s opinion piece questioning AARP’s motives, “United HealthCare focuses on record profits” reads like all the other opinion pieces that the pharmaceutical industry and its enablers recycle in newspapers.
Let’s be clear: AARP is a nonprofit advocacy group working vigorously to protect our members, all seniors and all Floridians against high drug prices – and when there’s a vaccine or a treatment for coronavirus, we’ll keep at it. Big Pharma fuels these attacks on AARP and other change-makers because it’s good for their business. Quashing change hurts seniors, everyone who pays into health insurance, and taxpayers—since we all bear the costs of today’s out-of-control drug prices through premiums, cost-sharing and higher taxes.
Americans pay the highest prescription prices in the world “for the exact same drugs, often made in the exact same place,” as President Trump said in his 2019 State of the Union Address.
AARP is fighting for change. So far we’ve won over 60 new state laws to help reduce drug costs, including a new law in Florida to allow safe importation of needed medicines at lower prices. Moreover, bipartisan federal legislation is in the works, and we’re pushing hard for it to become the law of the land.
AARP and our allies aren’t done. When Big Pharma attacks us, it’s a badge of honor.
John Hishta is the senior vice president of campaigns at AARP.