Reader faults AARP's 'Divided We Fail' campaign

The letter from the outreach volunteer of AARP in Monroe Township regarding the "Divided We Fail" pledges (March 12, Brick Bulletin) struck a chord.

My husband recently sent a letter to AARP regarding the "Divided We Fail" ads that were so prevalent before the presidential election. We had wanted to know the names of the insurance companies, which had treated those individuals badly so as to avoid those companies in the future.

Our first letter from AARP did not give any insurance company names. After a second request, we received a surprising answer from AARP — "our ads were not targeting or referencing any specific insurance company."

Stating as the ads did that one young person only had 5 percent of his hospitalization needs covered by his insurance company and telling us a family was bankrupted by their father's illness even though he felt he had good insurance was an effective scare tactic. However, if these were "made up" situations, that information should have been run as a disclaimer somewhere in the ad.

Divided we will fail if national organizations portray dramatizations as facts. We need calm-headed individuals from the medical, legal, insurance, pharmaceutical and political fields to rationally talk about these life-and-death issues. But then again, why would we want rational discussions to solve problems when scare tactics produce a desired political outcome?
Barbara Kochie
Brick