AARP doubles health insurance offerings

AARP is nothing but a marketing entity. The strong arm tactics they use to garner members are reprehensible. They,in no way, speak for me. Please explain to me what benefits one derives as a member that one cannot get belonging to other consumer groups.
Dave

It seems to me that key issue here is the way in which Aetna and United will be financially encouraged to institute innovations for their insured and their providers. Do these "incentive payments" come from the AARP, or are they tied to payments from the enrollees themselves? Are they significant enough to make the insurers establish programs that effectively get their enrollees and contracted providers to adopt key progressive behaviors such as electronic record entry and preventative check-ups, or giving discounted/free drugs to diabetics to keep them out of the ER? And are the established quality measures they are using to evaluate quality of care and patient health improvement specific enough, or are there areas that providers can exploit to get good scores but not really adopt "revolutionary" changes, as AARP is saying will happen?

I think it is safe to say that the use of incentives to get insurers to affect the behavior of providers and patients is an effective way of reducing health care costs. But the lack of transparency about the specifics of the plan (I could not find any on the AARP website or in any press releases or articles) makes me question whether the AARP has structured this deal effectively, especially when they are professing to make understanding one's health plan easier.