This week, the labor-affiliated Alliance for Retired Americans began running radio ads to protest the Republican budget cuts to Medicare and Social Security.
They joined thousands of voters across the country who held protests or sat in at congressional town hall forums demanding the Senate block the Republican Party's plan to gut Medicare by privatizing it.
According to analysis of the Republican Party's plan, over the next few decades retirees will pay an increasingly larger amount of their income to pay for healthcare coverage – if they are even able to buy health insurance at all.
Hundreds of voters even attended a town hall forum held by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., the "author" of the anti-Medicare law. After dozens of constituents caught Ryan lying about the bill, he fled the scene with armed bodyguards.
The pro-Medicare ads will air on the radio for seven days in Colorado, Missouri, and West Virginia, and call on Democratic Senators to block the Republican plan.
As many Republicans in Congress work to slash Social Security and Medicare benefits, the ads remind voters that the Republican budget would “…use our money to give more tax breaks to millionaires and corporations, and cut nursing home care and Social Security, too.”
During a speech at the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) 4th District meeting in Morgantown, West Virginia on Thursday, Alliance for Retired Americans President Barbara J. Easterling told union members that the Alliance ads were used to urge Senators from those three states to stand up for Social Security and Medicare.
To hear the ad that will air in West Virginia, go to http://bit.ly/h0ZHX1.
Conversely, the right-wing, corporate-backed 60 Plus Association, which claims to be a conservative seniors organization, is spending $800,000 on radio ads expressing approval for the House Republicans to dismantle and destroy Medicare.
Since 2000, 60 Plus has advocated privatization and fought a Democratic-sponsored bill that would have reduced the price of prescription drugs for retirees – presumably a benefit for their claimed constituency – by allowing the importation of safe, cheaper drugs from Canada.
60 Plus has also gotten hundreds of thousands of dollars from the pharmaceutical industry and has close ties the Republican Party. It serves as little more than a corporate front group and has few members who are actually seniors, except for cosmetic purposes.
