WASHINGTON Provisions in the House Republicans Obamacare replacement bill that would raise insurance costs for older Americans are drawing resistance from the influential seniors lobby.

The American Health Care Act , as Republicans are calling it, would allow insurers to make premiums for older Americans five times what they charge younger workers provided that a states regulations allow for it. Obamacare had capped this ratio, known as an age rating, at 3 to 1.

The measure was chief among the reasons AARP, the nations largest organization for older Americans, cited in explaining its opposition to the House bill on Tuesday evening.

Older Americans need affordable health care services and prescriptions, AARP Executive Vice President Nancy LeaMond said in a statement. This plan goes in the opposite direction, increasing insurance premiums for older Americans and not doing anything to lower drug costs.

AARP, which has nearly 38 million members ages 50 and older, is also firmly opposed to a pair of major changes to Medicaid that the House bill includes. One is a rollback of Obamacares Medicaid expansion, which made the program available to millions of low-income adults, many of them seniors, who had no insurance before. The other is a new Medicaid funding formula that could leave states on the hook for more and more money, a report from the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concluded Tuesday. That might force states to make cuts that hurt seniors, many of whom rely on Medicaid for nursing home care and other health services.

Medicaid cuts could impact people of all ages and put at risk the health and safety of 17.4 million children and adults with disabilities and seniors by eliminating much needed services that allow individuals to live independently in their homes and communities, LeaMond said. This harmful legislation would make health care less secure and less affordable.

AARP used its considerable political power to help pass Obamacare in 2010, despite the opposition of many members about 400,000 left the organization in protest. AARPs objection to key elements of the Republican bill to replace the landmark law could prove just as influential.

[AARP] backed it and paid the price for backing it, so why not support it against repeal? said Fred Lynch, a professor at Claremont McKenna College and author of One Nation Under AARP. The Congress is genuinely afraid of age power, and theyd just as soon let the sleeping giant go on sleeping.

The only possible leader right now is AARP, so its sort of in their hands, he said.

The mammoth organization has already registered its opposition to the two measures in letters to Congress in late January and early February .

AARP premiered a new video advertisement for the campaign on Monday, suggesting it was ramping up its efforts to kill the provision.

In the tongue-in-cheek ad that runs for just over a minute, a man chopping wood alongside a squirrel named Charlie expresses his anger at the age tax.

You know, Charlie and I were watching the news this morning, and they said that Congress has just introduced a new age-rating bill, the wood-chopping narrator says. And I was like, What the heck is age rating? Then Charlie explained that its Washington politician-speak for overcharging older Americans for their health insurance while lining the insurance companies pockets.

The ad is part of an advocacy campaign AARP launched Feb. 15 to specifically combat a rise in the age rating, which it is calling an age tax. At the time, the organization encouraged its members to call those in Congress who were active in drafting the health care legislation to oppose the rating provision.