HEADLINES: Vice President Harris Announces Plan For In-Home Health Care Coverage Benefiting Seniors, Families, and “Sandwich Generation”

Harris Announces Proposal To Extend Medicare Coverage For In-Home Health Care Services On ‘The View’

Today, Vice President Kamala Harris announced a new proposal to expand Medicare to help seniors and their families pay for in-home health care, helping working families, seniors, and the “sandwich generation.” This new benefit will be paid for by the billions of dollars in savings generated by expanding the Medicare drug price negotiation program. Already, the Inflation Reduction Act’s Medicare negotiation program is saving seniors and taxpayers billions of dollars, and Harris wants to accelerate the program and increase the number of drugs included in negotiations and to pay for long-term care. 

Harris continues to be a health care champion for lower costs and better care, but President Trump wants to go backwards. Trump is continuing to push the MAGA Project 2025 agenda that includes cutting Medicare, repealing the historic Inflation Reduction Act, banning Medicare from negotiating drug prices, raising drug costs and out-of-pocket expenses, and ending protections for the over 100 million Americans with pre-existing conditions. But don’t just take our word for it:

The Hill: Harris Leans Into Health Care In Race Against Trump.

• “Leslie Dach, founder and chair of the Democratic-aligned advocacy group Protect Our Care, said health care is a universal issue. ‘When someone in your family is sick or you’re sick, you know it takes over your life. Every American has felt that anxiety,’ Dach said. Harris’s campaign unveiled policy positions in early September, including a pledge to ‘make affordable health care a right, not a privilege by expanding and strengthening the Affordable Care Act.’”

The New York Times: Harris Proposes a Medicare Plan to Provide Home Care for Seniors.

• “Vice President Kamala Harris outlined a new proposal for home health care on ABC’s ‘ ‘The View’ on Tuesday, a plan for expanding Medicare coverage aimed at helping what is called the ‘sandwich generation’ take care of their aging parents. Many adults find themselves straddling the dual responsibilities of rearing their children at a time when their parents need more assistance to stay at home. And millions of Americans struggle to find affordable home care for themselves or their loved ones as they become older. Medicare, the federal insurance program for older Americans, does not cover long-term care and will generally pay for a home aide only if a patient is recovering from an acute medical condition, like a stroke, and only for a short time, often just a few months.”
• “While Medicaid will pay for a home aide if someone is poor or has no assets, there are long waiting lists to qualify. And in many areas of the country, there is a severe shortage of workers because of low wages and better, less stressful jobs in other businesses. Most people have no choice but to rely on a family member to care for them because they cannot afford the cost of care, which can surpass the expense of an assisted living facility. Agencies can charge about $30 an hour, according to Genworth, a long-term care insurance company. Others end up spending most of their assets and seeking care in a nursing home, where Medicaid does not have waiting lists.”

Reuters: Harris Proposes New Funds For At-Home Senior Care, Aiming At ‘Sandwich Generation’.

• “Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris announced a plan to expand healthcare benefits to cover at-home senior care in an interview on ABC’s ‘The View’ program on Tuesday, the latest policy proposal in her effort to boost the ‘care economy’ and lower healthcare costs.”
• “‘I took care of my mother when she was sick. She was diagnosed with cancer,’ Harris said, describing her personal experience with caregiving. ‘There are so many people in our country who are right in the middle. They take care of their kids and they’re taking care of their aging parents, and it’s just almost impossible to do it all,’ she said. […] Harris’ policy would expand Medicare, the federal insurance plan for elderly and disabled people, to cover long-term care for seniors at home for the first time, including services like in-home health aides, in hopes of saving American families the often high cost of nursing homes for aging family members.”

MarketWatch: Harris Says ‘It’s About Dignity’ As She Floats Plan For In-Home Care For Seniors.

• “The latest Harris proposal is for Medicare, the federal government’s health-insurance program for seniors, to cover home-care services such as in-home aides for a wider number of recipients. In-home aides currently are covered only in a limited way. ‘It’s about dignity for that individual,’ the vice president said during an appearance on the ABC talk show ‘The View.’ ‘They want to stay in their home. They don’t want to go somewhere else. Plus, for the family to send them to a residential-care facility, to hire somebody is so expensive,’ she said.”

Roll Call: Harris Unveils Plan To Allow Medicare To Cover In-Home Care.

• “Kamala Harris proposed a new campaign policy Tuesday to help seniors ‘age in place,’ a popular concept allowing older Americans to receive care at home through Medicare. The vice president and 2024 Democratic presidential nominee, speaking on ABC talk show ‘The View,’ said the proposal would allow families to keep their loved ones at home, rather than in nursing facilities, and avoid the associated costs of in-facility care. The proposal would cover home health aides, among other services, and provide relief to family members who juggle their careers and caregiving responsibilities.”

The Guardian: Harris Announces Plan For Medicare To Cover Long-Term Care At Home.

• “If approved, the program would represent a major expansion of Medicare, which currently only covers at-home care under narrow circumstances. Harris made the announcement on ABC’s The View, a day-time talkshow popular with older women.”
• “Today, Medicare typically covers at-home care only in ‘post-acute’ settings, such as when a person is recovering from a surgery. Instead Medicaid, the public health insurance program for the low-income and disabled, is the largest single payer of what the government calls ‘long-term support services’ – everything from nursing homes to the home health aides on which Harris focused. Medicaid spent $207bn on long-term support services in 2021, or roughly 44% of all such spending nationally, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). […] However, Harris did mention that the proposal was made through Medicare to avoid a phenomenon many in the sandwich generation will recognize – the Medicaid ‘spend down’. Families forced to ‘spend down’ their loved ones’ assets must pay for a certain amount of healthcare before Medicaid begins contributing to costs.”

Newsweek: Kamala Harris Touts Medicare Expansion Plan in First Live Interview.

• “Harris outlined key policy plans aimed at easing the financial burdens of middle-class families, emphasizing her commitment to expanding Medicare and lowering child care costs.”
• “The vice president wants to expand Medicare to cover at-home care services for seniors, a move aimed at alleviating financial burdens. Currently, most Medicare beneficiaries must pay out-of-pocket for home aides, a cost that, for some, can be nearly double their income.”
• “By lowering child care expenses and expanding Medicare, Harris aims to ease the pressure on families facing dual caregiving roles—a personal mission rooted in her own experience caring for her mother during her battle with cancer.”

STAT+: Harris Seeks To Tie Expanded Medicare Drug Price Negotiation To Home Care Policy.

• “Vice President Harris is proposing to use cuts to the pharmaceutical industry’s profits in Medicare to fund a home care benefit for people over the age of 65, she announced Tuesday. Harris has followed in President Biden’s footsteps by calling to expand Medicare’s new drug price negotiation to include more drugs and make drugs qualify for negotiation with less time on the market. The drug industry’s fear when lawmakers first allowed Medicare to negotiate drug prices was that once the firewall prohibiting Medicare from interfering with drug prices was broken, Congress would find expanding the program to pay for other policies irresistible. If Harris has her way, those fears could become reality.”

Bloomberg: Harris Pitches Medicare Coverage for In-Home Health Aides.

• “Vice President Kamala Harris unveiled a new plan to cover in-home health care for seniors, a proposal she said would ease the burden on working adults responsible for aging parents and raising children. ‘It’s just almost impossible to do it all. Especially if they work — we’re finding that so many are then having to leave their job,’ Harris said on ABC’s The View, during one of three major interviews set for Tuesday.”

CNBC News: Harris Proposes Expanding Medicare To Cover Long-Term Care At Home. 

• “Vice President Kamala Harris announced a new proposal on Tuesday that would require Medicare to cover the costs of long-term care at home. That coverage could potentially allow millions of seniors and people with disabilities to get care at home rather than in a nursing facility. Over 37 million people, or 14% of the adult population, provide some form of unpaid eldercare in the United States, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The majority of these caretakers, around 59%, are women.”

NPR: Harris Proposes Help For The ‘Sandwich Generation’: A Medicare Benefit For Home Care.

• “Vice President Harris on Tuesday will lay out a new proposal to expand Medicare coverage to help cover the costs of home health care aides for seniors. […] The proposal is squarely aimed at ‘sandwich generation’ women who take care of aging parents as well as their own kids. […] In its current form, Medicare doesn’t widely cover assistance like home health aides for seniors, which can be costly. And nursing home facilities are also expensive. Harris’ plan to expand Medicare to cover at-home care for seniors would be paid for in part by expanding Medicare drug price negotiations, her campaign said.”

HuffPost: Kamala Harris Proposes Big Home Care Benefit For Medicare.

• “Such a plan could mean the option of staying at home, rather than in a nursing facility, for the millions of seniors and people with disabilities who need help with the daily tasks of life. It could also mean physical and financial relief ― and new opportunities for school or work outside the home ― for the millions of working-age Americans who today provide so much of that care on their own without much in the way of outside assistance.”
• “If the proposed legislation is enacted, such a program would represent a substantial boost in federal support for caregiving and, by any measure, one of the largest one-time increases in American history.”

The SF Chronicle: Kamala Harris To Announce Plan To Help Families Pay For In-Home Health Care.

• “A majority of voters support efforts to pay for home care for seniors. A September Data for Progress poll found 88% of likely voters support expanding Medicare to include coverage for long-term in-home care, including 84% of independents and 86% of Republicans.”
• “The global population — and that of San Francisco — is rapidly aging, and in a country where most seniors are dependent on Medicare, access to affordable long-term care to assist with everyday tasks like dressing and bathing and skilled nursing for seniors who need medical care in the home is often hard to find and prohibitively expensive. Medicare covers in-home, long-term health care in a very narrow set of circumstances, and getting coverage can be difficult and complicated.”
• “Harris has long worked on improving paid leave, child care and long-term care and has made her efforts to help families a centerpiece of her campaign. She also cared for her mother at the end of her life. Nearly one-quarter of Americans are caring for aging parents while raising children — a group the Harris campaign said makes up a large percentage of undecided voters, citing internal polling.”

Forbes: Kamala Harris Will Propose New Medicare Benefit To Cover Home Care Costs For Seniors.

• “Harris’ pitch will call for establishing a home care benefit through Medicare to cover the cost of long-term care services—including health aides—for seniors, without them needing to go to a nursing home. According to the Democrat’s campaign, the plan would be funded by the savings from her proposal of expanding Medicare drug price negotiations.”
• “Harris campaign officials told various outlets that the proposal is aimed at the so-called ‘sandwich generation’ of middle-aged Americans—who account for nearly a quarter of the U.S. population—and make up a sizable percentage of undecided voters. According to the Pew Research Center, the ‘sandwich generation’ is made up of adults who are supporting a living parent aged 65 or older, while also raising a child under the age of 18 or financially supporting a grown child.”

The Wall Street Journal: Harris Wants Medicare to Cover Home Care for More Seniors.

• “Vice President Kamala Harris is proposing a new Medicare benefit for in-home eldercare, part of a pitch to middle-aged voters who are grappling with the dual cost of raising children and attending to their aging parents.”
• “The proposal would cover long-term home care services, including health aides, according to Harris campaign officials, allowing many seniors to get the support they need without going to a nursing home. The officials said the benefit, which would require congressional approval, would be paid for from the savings from a series of proposals Harris has made to lower prescription-drug costs. The plan builds on a proposal pitched by President Biden that didn’t win enough support to pass Congress.”
• “Harris has separately called for capping child-care costs at 7% of a working family’s income and for expanding the child tax credit, including offering $6,000 to the parents of newborns.”

Axios: Harris To Propose New Medicare Benefit For Senior Care.

• “Harris’ plan is to expand Medicare coverage to cover at-home care for seniors, enabling families to afford services like in-home health aides, according to a senior Harris campaign official. The plan could help families avoid expensive senior facilities that can cost more than in-home care. Savings from medicare drug price negotiations will help pay for the plan, as will increasing the discounts drug manufacturers cover for certain brand-name drugs for Medicare enrollees.”
• “About 47% of U.S. adults in their 40s and 50s are juggling caring for both elderly parents and young children, according to the Pew Research Center. […] Harris has previously spoken about her own experiences caring for her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, when she was sick with cancer. ‘I have a personal experience with caregiving. I remember being there for my mother when she was diagnosed with cancer. Cooking meals for her, taking her to her appointments …. I know caregiving is about dignity,’ she said at a campaign stop in Pittsburgh last month. America is facing a looming senior care crisis, with nearly 70% of older adults projected to need long-term care services that are hard to come by, let alone pay for.”

Politico: Harris To Propose New Medicare Home Care Benefit For Seniors.

• “The vice president will propose establishing a home care benefit through Medicare focused on helping families afford the cost of caring for seniors at home instead of in nursing facilities, according to a senior campaign official granted anonymity to share details of the proposal. The senior official said the proposal would help older Americans age at home and avoid the costs of in-facility care, which can be thousands of dollars more a month than in-home care. The benefit would cover the costs of various home care services, including in-home health aides.”
• “The proposal is the latest in a line of campaign promises from the vice president aimed at helping parents and other caregivers, something that was one of President Joe Biden’s top domestic priorities. In August, Harris announced a plan to both bring back the pandemic-era expanded child tax credit, as well as establish a new $6,000 tax credit for parents of newborns. Studies have shown that more than 40 percent of Americans, more than 105 million people, currently provide unpaid care.”

Daily Mail (UK): Kamala Harris To Use Her Appearance On The View To Pitch To The ‘Sandwich Generation’.

• “Vice President Kamala Harris is set to propose the first-ever expansion of Medicare to help Americans known as the so-called ‘sandwich generation’ who are facing the staggering burden of taking care of kids as well as aging parents at the same time.”
• “The proposal includes the first-ever expansion of Medicare to include at-home care benefits to help address the long-term care of seniors. The vice president wants to cover home care services like in-home aides, so seniors do not have to choose between having to go to a facility for care as they age or burdening their families.”