For more than 50 years AARP’s mission has been educating and engaging in the issues most important to our members. Health care reform is not a Democratic or Republican issue – it’s an American issue.

AARP does not support any political party or agenda. We advocate on behalf of 40 million older Americans, including 442,000 older Oklahomans.

In 2003, AARP worked with President Bush to pass Medicare Part D because it helped millions of Americans — thousands of Oklahomans — get access to prescription drugs. We fought for Part D, over the objections of some Democrats, not because it was a Republican issue but because it was an American issue.

Two years later, when the debate shifted, we fought the privatization of Social Security, over the objections of some of the same people with whom we worked to pass Part D. Not because it was a Democratic issue, but because it was an American issue.

Today, we find ourselves in the middle of the debate on health care reform. AARP has been working with leaders of both parties to pass essential, bipartisan legislation, that will provide older Americans access to affordable, quality health care. We are aggressively working towards:

• Protecting Medicare benefits.

• Ending discrimination based on age or pre-existing conditions.

• Lowering the costs of health care, including prescription drugs.

• Eliminating waste, fraud and abuse.

Specifically, we have endorsed a variety of bipartisan bills, that include Republican co-authors among whom are: Sens. John Cornyn of Texas, Charles Grassley of Iowa, Orrin Hatch of Utah, Judd Gregg of New Hampshire and Olympia Snowe of Maine, and Reps. Jo Ann Emerson of Missouri, Nathan Deal of Georgia and Charles Boustany, a surgeon from Louisiana.

AARP is working diligently to ensure these measures make it into the final legislation.

We support plans to increase pay for doctors with Medicare patients and encourage medical students to go into primary care so that everyone in Medicare can continue to see their own doctor and to close the gap in Medicare Part D known as the donut hole.

AARP believes in fiscal responsibility and we can pay for these improvements without adding to our deficit by rooting out the waste, fraud and abuse that are driving up older Americans’ Medicare premiums and other health care bills.

AARP will not support a health care bill that cuts Medicare benefits or puts bureaucracy between the patient and the doctor. Nor would we ever support rationing care.

Let’s not lose sight of what’s at stake in the health care debate: While costs are skyrocketing, millions of Americans — thousands of Oklahomans — are losing their jobs and health coverage and countless businesses are being forced to drop their health care plans or close their doors.

Family premiums for employer-sponsored insurance will jump nearly 40 percent by 2012 and will almost double by 2016. The full cost will rise from an average of about $13,000 this year to over $24,000 in 2016. For Medicare beneficiaries, premiums have doubled since 2000.

Health care reform is not a Democratic or Republican issue — it’s an American issue.

Nancy Coffer is senior state director for AARP Oklahoma.