The AAA Plan for Seniors: Aging Affordably in America

Michigan’s seniors worked, paid in, and played by the rules. They deserve Medicare that actually covers all their health needs, Social Security they can live on, and a home they can afford to stay in. The Aging Affordably in America platform delivers all three — and pays for it by making the wealthy pay their fair share.

Medicare that covers ALL of you.

Medicare was designed as a comprehensive guarantee. Through decades of cost-sharing requirements, benefit exclusions, and privatization, it’s become a patchwork that forces seniors into thousands of dollars of out-of-pocket expenses before meaningful coverage kicks in, and into a supplemental insurance market that exists only because Medicare itself has been purposely kept inadequate.

End all cost-sharing. Premiums, deductibles, and co-pays are eliminated for Medicare beneficiaries. The program provides first-dollar coverage. No senior should be rationing medication or avoiding care because of a deductible.

Expand Medicare drug price negotiation powers: Expand CMS drug price negotiation authority under the Inflation Reduction Act to cover all drugs paid for by Medicare, rather than the limited number currently permitted.

Close the gap. The supplemental insurance market for Medicare forces seniors to pay an additional $2,000 per year in premiums. It’s a direct consequence of Medicare’s coverage gaps. Comprehensive coverage makes it unnecessary. Eliminating it removes an entire cost burden from seniors on fixed incomes.

Expand coverage for vision, dental, and hearing. These are not secondary benefits. Untreated hearing loss is among the leading risk factors for dementia. Dental disease can cause cardiovascular disease. Vision loss is the leading cause of preventable falls. No logical healthcare system arbitrarily decides these items are not part of essential coverage. Covering all three is not generosity, it’s good healthcare policy that saves seniors and saves money.

Ban AI-based prior authorization. Automated denial systems are overriding physician judgment at scale, delaying or denying healthcare your doctor said you need. No algorithm should be able to deny care that a licensed physician has determined is necessary. Prior authorization decisions must be made by a licensed physician with full access to the patient’s record and subject to binding physician-to-physician review on appeal.

Securing Social Security.

Social Security is not a benefit, it’s a return on a lifetime of investment. Two structural flaws undermine that return for millions of workers, and a third ensures the wealthiest Americans contribute less than their fair share.

Repeal the Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset. WEP and GPO reduce or eliminate Social Security benefits for public employees. That includes folks like teachers, firefighters, police officers, nurses who spent careers serving their communities under pension systems that operated outside Social Security. These workers paid into their pensions instead of Social Security, often by statutory requirement, not by choice. WEP penalizes them for it by cutting their earned Social Security benefits. GPO goes further, eliminating spousal and survivor benefits for public-sector retirees. Both provisions are punitive, both disproportionately harm women, and both should be repealed in full.

Lift the payroll tax cap. The Social Security payroll tax currently cuts off at $176,100 in earned income. A billionaire and a warehouse worker pay identical dollar amounts above that threshold on every additional dollar earned. Eliminating that cap more than extends Social Security solvency through the century.

Ending the tax on Social Security benefits. Seniors earned their social security benefit. They should keep all of it. Social security benefits should be excluded from gross income.

Age in Place with Grace.

Rising home valuations have created a paradox: the home a senior paid off over thirty years has become an annual financial burden that grows regardless of their income. A retired autoworker whose home has tripled in assessed value pays taxes on a paper gain they can never realize without selling the house they live in. 

Additionally, for many seniors, the difference between aging in place and entering a facility comes down to a few hours of help each day—assistance with bathing, meals, medication, or mobility. Yet Medicaid home and community-based services are chronically underfunded, leaving hundreds of thousands of eligible seniors on waiting lists while institutional care remains the default option the system is built to pay for. We must fix this.

Federal framework for state-level property tax freezes. For homeowners 65 and older, property tax assessments are frozen at their value at age 65 or the date of enactment, whichever is lower. The federal government provides fiscal incentives and funding to cover municipal revenue shortfalls.

Income-targeted priority. Relief is structured to prioritize seniors at or below 200% of the federal poverty level — those most at risk of displacement — while remaining available to all senior homeowners to avoid means-testing complexity at the point of administration.

Freeze follows the senior, not the property. The assessment freeze does not transfer on sale or death. When the home changes hands, it reassesses at market value. This preserves local tax base integrity over time while ensuring the relief serves its intended purpose: allowing seniors to remain in their homes on fixed incomes.

Federal investment in home and community-based services (HCBS). Increase the federal Medicaid matching rate for home health and personal care services, incentivizing states to expand eligibility, reduce waiting lists, and improve caregiver wages — addressing both access and the workforce shortage that limits capacity.

End the institutional bias in long-term care financing. Current Medicaid rules make it easier to fund a nursing home bed than a home health aide. This platform directs CMS to revise reimbursement structures so that home and community-based care is funded on equal footing with institutional alternatives, giving seniors and their families a genuine choice.

Support family caregivers who are already doing the work. Millions of family members provide unpaid care that delays or prevents costlier interventions. A federal caregiver tax credit and access to respite care services recognizes that contribution and helps sustain it—keeping seniors at home longer without burning out the people who make it possible.