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On the Front Lines of the Health-Care Debate in Colorado
AARP Official Tries To Clear Seniors' Confusion, Anxiety
By Philip Rucker, Washington Post
September 9, 2009
In the battle to enact health-care reform, Morie Smile is a foot soldier.
It falls to Smile to calm the fury and correct the misinformation that has poured forth this summer and rattled so many senior citizens. From her neighborhood Safeway to town hall meetings across Colorado, she is trying to convince seniors that President Obama does not want to take away their Medicare or submit them to a premature death, that the country needs health-care reform, and that it needs it now.
When Smile, 46, the acting director of AARP's Colorado office, brought her road show to the Golden West retirement center here at the foothills of the Flatiron Mountains, she saw little of the histrionic anger that came to define the August congressional recess. Instead, she found widespread confusion about Obama's plan, as well as deep anxiety among older people, content with their health coverage, who fear they could pay the costs of universal care.
About 40 seniors were expected at the AARP health-care presentation here last week, but nearly 200 rode elevators down from their suites to attend, many carrying yellow legal pads for taking notes.
"I voted for Obama," Jane Motes, 73, a Medicare recipient, said as she wheeled her oxygen tank. "But I don't know what he's doing. . . . We've got to do something for all these people who don't have health care, but I don't understand who's going to get the shaft. Take it all away from the seniors? Well, we'll be dead soon anyways."
Even in this heavily Democratic enclave of the Rocky Mountain West -- Obama won 72 percent of the vote in Boulder County in last year's presidential election -- there is unease about his health-care agenda. And it is ever more palpable among people 65 and older, a powerful voting group that polls suggest has shifted dramatically over the summer to become solidly opposed to the reform plans.
As Obama prepares to deliver an address before a rare joint session of Congress on Wednesday, the deep apprehension among even his supporters at the retirement center in Boulder -- fueled in part by the misinformation spreading on the Internet and talk radio -- illustrates the president's challenge.
People over 65 are among the most reliable voters, particularly in midterm elections, so their opinions weigh heavily on members of Congress. About six in 10 (59 percent) of Americans over 65 disapprove of the way Obama is handling health care, with 53 percent strongly disapproving, according to a mid-August Washington Post-ABC News poll. That is a marked change from two months earlier, when a Post-ABC poll found that 41 percent of those over 65 disapproved, with 33 percent strongly disapproving.
Yet while seniors are split, AARP is not. Health care has been a hallmark priority dating back to the advocacy group's founding in 1958. AARP, which represents some 40 million Americans aged 50 and older, was an early backer of Obama's efforts to reform health care and is waging one of the more visible campaigns to win support. It has launched a multimillion-dollar advertising blitz, convened hundreds of town halls and other community events, and shipped millions of direct-mail flyers.
The Washington-based nonpartisan organization -- a conglomerate, really, that also sells discounted travel, gym memberships and insurance policies to its members -- is in the uncomfortable position of representing people who rarely are in lockstep.
AARP members 65 and older are eligible for Medicare and want to preserve those benefits. Those between 50 and 64, meanwhile, fall into a demographic in which many are uninsured or underinsured or pay some of the highest premiums, and therefore could most benefit from any government intervention that would reduce costs.
Citing AARP's support for health-care reform, about 60,000 people cancelled their memberships, although the organization enrolled about 400,000 new members during the same period.
"We never expected this to be a calm discussion," said Nancy LeaMond, an AARP executive vice president managing the health-care campaign. "It's an emotionally charged issue, but I think we were taken by the ferocity of the opponents on some of these key points and the willingness to scare seniors."
Here in Colorado, Smile and her staff of seven (and about 300 volunteers) are holding dozens of events to sell health-care reform to AARP's 700,000 members statewide. Asked how she views her role in the debate, Smile pointed to her red open-toe sandal and said: "We're where the shoe leather meets the road."
Smile and her staff have received hundreds of e-mails from seniors in recent weeks, some vitriolic and many spreading what Smile calls "white noise," but they feel a personal obligation to answer each one. The typical reply is six pages long, stating that AARP has not yet endorsed a bill but is pushing for six priorities, among them guaranteeing access to affordable coverage, closing the Medicare Part D coverage gap (known as the "doughnut hole") and approving generic versions of drugs to reduce the price of treatments.
Before the Boulder event, Smile led a staff meeting in AARP's Denver office to plot strategy. She asked Laura Bowman, associate state director for community outreach, for a report on visibility efforts in "the hell that was August."
"We started the month with a lot of yelling and screaming in the public squares, and we're closing the month and the hysteria seems to have died down," Bowman said. "When you can engage someone in a conversation, it can be very illuminating. We can really make headway with putting it all on the table and engaging people in a rational way and getting past the fear."
The key, the group determined, would be their message and the urgency it conveys.
"Now it's, 'Why health-care reform, and why now?' " Bowman said. "We really have to get our members to understand that it's more than AARP, more than the over-65 crowd. It's for America. Change is scary, and big-time change is big-time scary."
To the AARP staff, this is a personal fight. Kelli Fritts, associate state director for advocacy, has been lobbying lawmakers on health care for two decades. Bowman has worked on the issue for 23 years at AARP.
Smile and Bowman were invited to Boulder by a group of citizen activists, the Boulder Action Group (the "BAG ladies"), to help dispel myths about health-care reform. Before they arrived, Smile joked that "I've got my armor."
However, Smile and Bowman did not need armor, but answers. There were many questions: Where did the idea of "death panels" -- to decide when to stop medical care for seniors -- come from? Is Obama's reform plan going to take away Medicare?
"The first thing I want to tell you today is no one is here to take your Medicare," Bowman said to the assembled seniors. "Take a deep breath."
"If it sounds kind of crazy, it probably is," Smile told the crowd. "Death panels? 'We're trying to kill Grandma'? Does that sound a little crazy? Yeah, it does. Nobody's trying to kill Grandma. Reject the myth. Reject the hyperbole. This is serious stuff, and don't get sucked in by the scary stuff."
Yet, after the presentation, it was the scary stuff that seniors said still had them spooked.
"I like my health coverage now," said Bruce Searby, a retired electronics technician whose black patch covering his right eye is evidence of a 2007 bout with a rare skin cancer. "I don't want it to change."
Fred Layer, 86, said he remains confused about the reform plans being hatched in Washington: "The right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing."
Motes, the woman with the oxygen tank, said Bowman and Smile's presentation answered some of her concerns. "But I'm not less scared about it," Motes said. "I'm apprehensive still."
Polling analyst Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.
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