Art Hadley checked out the AARP endorsement last week of the Republican plan to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare.

Now he’s mad.

“I just sent them an e-mail, telling them I quit,” Hadley, 53, said Tuesday. “I think it’s pretty clear they don’t represent me; they represent themselves and their insurance company, which stands to make millions off this deal.”

He isn’t alone. Across the nation, thousands of AARP members have expressed concerns about the organization’s endorsement of the legislation, and many have canceled their membership in the 35 million member organization that is the leading advocacy group for America’s senior citizens.

Hadley, a Lawrence resident who works at Kansas University’s Audio-Reader Network, said he called the Kansas AARP office in Topeka in hopes of finding someone who would explain the endorsement. All he got was an answering machine that bounced him from one prompt to another.

“I got the feeling they’re hearing from a lot of people like me and this was their way of dealing with it — or not dealing with it,” he said.

Kansas AARP Executive Director Maren Turner confirmed the prompts were added to the office’s telephone system to accommodate members’ calls regarding the issue. But she said Hadley should have been referred to an AARP call center in Virginia instead of being bounced around. An operator there, she said, would have answered his questions.

“Our job is to get the information out,” Turner said.

Potential windfall

Art Hadley, at his job at Kansas University's Audio-Reader Network, is among those to resign from AARP after the organization's support of new Medicare legislation. The Senate passed the bill Tuesday.

It has been widely reported that AARP receives millions of dollars a year in royalties for insurance marketed under its name and would reap a windfall from the just-approved plan, which would pump $400 billion into new drug benefits and open Medicare to private insurance competition.

AARP’s annual reports show it received about $608 million in insurance-related income during the four most recent years for which data are available. That amount is about what it receives from members’ dues.

“It’s almost unimaginable that they wouldn’t stand to gain” if the new benefit passed, David Himmelstein of Harvard Medical School told USA Today.

But Turner denied AARP based its endorsement of the legislation on the potential for greater earnings.

“AARP has never opposed or supported a position based on whether it would increase or decrease revenues,” she said. “We base our positions on what’s best for our members, even if that means elimination of some of our services.”

AARP last week announced a survey had found that “a resounding 75 percent” of its members supported the GOP plan.

Hadley called the poll “bogus” because, according to AARP’s own news release, 62 percent of those called said they were “not very familiar” with the plan. The hearty endorsement, he said, came after a three-minute briefing on the bill’s content, after which respondents were asked whether they supported “lower prescription drug prices for the elderly.”

“They’re telling me that 75 percent of the membership supports this. Based on this survey? I find that hard to believe,” Hadley said.

According to the AARP news release, the survey was based on calls to 494 of its 35 million members.

Medicare to undergo historic changes under bill Congress settling prescription drug benefit for seniors (11-13-03) Governors seek cut on prescription costs for elderly poor (8-5-03)AARP: Medicare and Prescription DrugsKansas AARP

Additional concerns

Hadley said he also was bothered by:

• AARP launching a $7 million ad campaign in support of the plan on the same day the survey was released.

“That tells me they knew how this was going to turn out ahead of time,” Hadley said.

• AARP’s Executive Director William Novelli writing the forward to “Saving Lives & Saving Money,” Newt Gingrich’s book on health care reform.

“You know, I really don’t know what all is in the bill. It’s a huge bill,” Hadley said. “So you sort of have to look and see who’s selling it and who’s not selling it, and who do you trust and who don’t you trust. Newt Gingrich is a good example of somebody I don’t trust. And so now I guess I can’t trust AARP’s executive director, either.”

Turner said Novelli’s forward was directed at health-care issues rather than Gingrich’s conservative agenda.

“AARP is nonpartisan,” she said. “We work with the White House and with both sides of the aisle — in Washington and at the state level.”

Turner added that the Medicare bill “is not perfect, but on balance it will provide tremendous coverage for those who are low-income or who have high drug costs.”