How AARP Fought for You in 2021

The year 2021 brought momentous policy challenges as our nation sought to address issues of the pandemic and economic recovery. AARP responded forcefully to these challenges, both in Washington and across all 50 state capitals, securing major victories for our members and families throughout America.

We worked to make the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) as inclusive as possible, ensuring that relief flowed to those who needed it. And we made the case for an array of priorities, including direct stimulus payments, vaccinations, home- and community-based services, broadband, nutrition benefits, housing and transportation.

Our advocacy required an unprecedented amount of remote work, making video connections, phone calls, emails and texts more crucial than ever. Success was built on a foundation of alliances and relationships that we have forged across lines of party and geography over many years.

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What follows is a summary of AARP’s top advocacy accomplishments in 2021.

Getting COVID-19 vaccines to older adults and others at high risk

• AARP advocated at the federal and state level to ensure that older adults, who were most likely to get sick or die from the virus, were prioritized for the vaccine.
• We pushed to get vaccines into nursing homes, which were suffering a horrific death rate. And we pressed nursing homes to require vaccinations of residents and staff, a move that prompted the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to require vaccinations of nursing home staff.
• AARP state offices sent letters to 19 states demanding prioritization of the most vulnerable, particularly for homebound individuals and those living in nursing homes.
• We called for improved public transparency on vaccination rates, especially in nursing homes. This effort also resulted in CMS publishing nursing home resident and staff vaccination rates on a consumer-friendly website.

Securing stimulus payments that were automatic, fast and inclusive

• Early in the year, AARP secured direct payments of $1,400 ($2,800 for joint filers) and $1,400 per dependent. These automatic payments included Social Security, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), Social Security Disability Insurance and veterans benefits, and were the third such payments AARP helped push through during the pandemic.
• AARP led a fight to increase payments to families of adult dependents, a group that had been treated inadequately in previous pandemic relief bills. AARP also ensured that residents of U.S. territories were eligible.
• We served as champion for millions of older Americans who had not received their third stimulus payments in a timely manner and sought information. AARP met repeatedly with the Internal Revenue Service and Social Security Administration (SSA) to voice these concerns. In response to our push, the SSA unveiled a web page with information about the payments, and the IRS issued another 25 million stimulus payments, primarily to Social Security beneficiaries who do not usually file tax returns.

Enhancing food benefits and fighting hunger for those who need it most

• AARP pushed for an increase in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) that hiked benefits for all 42 million SNAP participants, including 8.7 million households with someone age 50 or older — the largest permanent increase in the program’s history. We helped increase the monthly cap for one-person households to $250, up from $204.
• Our staff provided support to state offices to help them advocate for the continuation of emergency SNAP allotments in states with expiring benefits.
• AARP also helped stop a proposal that would have eliminated SNAP benefits for 3.1 million people, with a disproportionate impact on older households.

Gaining high-speed internet access for those who cannot afford it

• AARP conducted an ambitious strategy to inform the public of an Emergency Broadband Benefit (EBB) to make high-speed internet service affordable for those with low incomes. We created a web page that received 184,000 views, and we targeted specific communities, including Native Americans, with an informational video. Due to these and other efforts, more than 7.8 million people (40 percent of whom were 50 or older) enrolled for temporary discounts of $50 a month.
• Our success with the EBB represented a leap forward for AARP’s leadership in the broadband and telecommunications space, strengthening our advocacy for older adults and the underserved.
• AARP lobbied extensively for $43 billion in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) to improve high-speed internet access in areas that have been neglected. The IIJA made permanent the EBB program, renaming it the Affordable Connectivity Program.
• In addition, more than $42 billion was authorized in the IIJA to support investment in broadband deployment, with a focus on expanding access to unserved and underserved communities.
• And nearly $3 billion has been authorized to support digital equity so that all people with high-speed internet access have the necessary training and support to take advantage of it.

Providing emergency aid to keep housing affordable and protecting homeowners and renters from eviction

• Early in the year, AARP advocated for the administration to extend pandemic eviction and foreclosure moratoriums until the end of the pandemic, and to provide emergency relief for renters.
• AARP pushed hard for additional aid for needy households — $27.4 billion in rental assistance and nearly $10 billion in homeownership assistance. Our state offices played an important role in encouraging state leaders to make full use of the funding while also extending eviction protections wherever possible.
• We also signed on to a letter urging the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission to use their powers to better protect tenants and homeowners facing eviction and foreclosure.

Expanding funding for transportation to increase convenience and safety for all users and make communities easier to live in

• As part of our commitment to livable communities, AARP pressed for substantial transportation funding in a broad range of programs and initiatives. Our advocacy led to $30.5 billion for public transportation in the American Rescue Plan, including programs specifically designed for older adults and people with disabilities.
• As always, we encouraged bipartisan alliances and worked with a bipartisan group of senators who signed off on a far-reaching framework that was incorporated into the IIJA, which became law in November. This framework provides $284 billion in new transportation spending, including $40 billion for public transit that will be especially helpful for older adults and rural Americans.
• At the state and local level, 2021 yielded 19 separate advocacy victories for a range of transportation measures that make it safer, easier and more affordable to get around.

Ramping up our efforts to contain prescription drug prices

• Due in large part to AARP’s advocacy, the House of Representatives passed a version of the Build Back Better Act (BBB) that includes meaningful reforms to bring down medication costs. The bill would finally enable Medicare to negotiate for certain drug prices. It would penalize drug companies that hike prices faster than inflation. It would establish a hard out-of-pocket cap for Medicare Part D. And it would cap copayments for insulin.
• After the drug provisions had been seriously weakened or removed, we led an extraordinary push to mobilize our members. That effort, which included 300,000 emails and 9,000 phone calls to Congress, galvanized enough support to get the much-needed drug reforms back into the legislation.
• AARP helped pass 26 new laws in 16 states related to prescription drug prices. Victories include the establishment of drug affordability boards in Colorado and Oregon; new Rx price transparency laws in North Dakota, Texas, Maine and Nevada; and caps on out-of-pocket expenses in Kentucky, Oregon, Rhode Island and Oklahoma.

Expanding access to affordable health care

• AARP helped gain approval of consumer subsidies in Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces that will remain in effect through this year. Income limits for ACA financial assistance were temporarily eliminated, and overall premium costs for marketplace plans were capped at 8.5 percent of income.
• Our ACA outreach and educational efforts, including a dedicated AARP resource page, helped more than one million 50- to 64-year-olds get more affordable coverage during a Special Enrollment Period that ran from mid-February to mid-August.
• We continued to build support for better Medicare coverage, raising political awareness of the need for hearing, vision and dental benefits. In a significant milestone, the House-passed version of the BBB includes a new hearing benefit for Medicare, a long-standing AARP advocacy goal.
• AARP advocated for a generous Medicaid expansion incentive in ARPA that provides large financial benefits for states that newly expand Medicaid. AARP also supported Oklahoma and Missouri in their Medicaid expansions.
• We devoted considerable resources to defending and improving Medicaid programs by, for example, advocating for rollbacks of work requirements that block access to care. Our 10 victories in nine states included resisting major cuts in Idaho ($118 million) and gaining additional funding in Arizona ($600 million).

Supporting family caregivers and improving conditions in nursing homes 

• AARP’s advocacy enabled more families to safely visit loved ones in nursing homes during the pandemic. We urged CMS to update visitation guidelines at nursing homes and require greater transparency for their vaccination data. They responded with a helpful requirement that most nursing homes report such data, and CMS publicly displayed it on a consumer-friendly website.
• The Credit for Caring Act, which would provide tax breaks for eligible family caregivers, was included in reconciliation provisions that passed the House Ways and Means Committee. While still pending, the legislation gained a growing, bipartisan list of cosponsors in both chambers.
• AARP successfully advocated for enhanced funding of home- and community-based services (HCBS) through Medicaid — vital supports that help people live as independently as possible. We secured a 10-percentage-point temporary boost for states to expand, enhance and strengthen Medicaid HCBS through ARPA. In addition, we pushed for a historic $150 billion investment in Medicaid to strengthen the paid HCBS workforce and expand services, provisions that are pending in BBB legislation.
• At the state level, we supported the enactment of 54 new laws related to improved access to HCBS, provided comment letters and testimony to help with advocacy efforts, updated a model caregiving resolution, and promoted the need for advanced practice registered nurses to provide direct care services in a variety of settings.

Keeping Social Security benefits strong and effective

• AARP lobbied hard to derail the TRUST Act, which we viewed as opening the door to reducing Americans’ hard-earned Social Security benefits. Our vigilance to protect Social Security remains a priority.
• We also worked hard to delay and ultimately to reverse an SSA proposal that would have increased the frequency of disability reviews for Social Security and SSI disability beneficiaries, a change that would have jeopardized benefits for many Americans.

Protecting workers against age discrimination

• We took important steps forward with House passage of the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act (POWADA) and the Protect Older Job Applicants Act (POJA). Both bills are important, with POWADA seeking to restore worker protections that were eroded by a 2009 Supreme Court decision. AARP is working closely with the Senate Special Committee on Aging to advance these much-needed bills in the Senate.