AARP’s decision this week to endorse Medicare prescription drug legislation, a step that caught Democrats by surprise, was the product of years of cultivation by the Bush administration and top Republicans on Capitol Hill.
   
The dialogue that led to AARP’s seal of approval for the $400 billion measure, providing the first prescription drug benefit to seniors while opening the Medicare system to private insurance competition, included intense discussions in recent weeks with House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Ill.) and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (Tenn.) and a private conversation between President Bush and AARP President James Parkel.

The AARP endorsement “didn’t happen overnight,” said Thomas A. Scully, administrator of the agency that runs Medicare. “We spent a lot of time working with them over the last three years.” ...

--Washington Post/MSNBC