Vice President Kamala Harris unveiled a plan Tuesday that would strengthen Medicare coverage to include long-term care for seniors in their homes, solving one of America’s biggest health care challenges.
The Democratic presidential candidate revealed the proposal on “The View” – one of several high-profile media appearances this week as she and the GOP presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, race to the finish line in November.
“There are so many people in our country who are in the middle: taking care of their children and aging parents, and it’s almost impossible to do it all, especially if they’re working,” Harris said during the live interview. “We found that so many people then have to leave their jobs, which means they lose their source of income, not to mention emotional stress.”
Harris focuses on the “sandwich generation,” which refers to Americans who are caring for their children while also caring for aging parents.
Under planAccording to her campaign, Medicare – the nationwide health insurance program for people 65 and older and certain people under 65 with certain disabilities or conditions – would cover home health benefits for people enrolled in the program, as well as hearing and vision benefits in Tuesday’s fact sheet.
For the most part, Medicare currently does not cover long-term care services such as home health aides.
The benefits would be funded by “expanding Medicare drug price negotiations, increasing drugmaker rebates for certain brand-name drugs in Medicare, and addressing Medicare fraud,” her campaign says.
Harris also plans to “crack down on pharmaceutical benefit managers (PBMs) to increase transparency, disclose more cost information and regulate other price-boosting practices,” according to her campaign, in which she also announced “implementing international tax reform.”
The campaign did not mention the price, but it was noted similar plans estimated to cost $40 billion a year, “before considering the savings from avoiding hospitalizations and more expensive institutional care, or the additional revenues that would be generated by having more unpaid family caregivers return to work if needed.”
The proposal is attached to the candidate’s proposal a wide-ranging economic planpart of which is a tax cut for more than 100 million Americans, including a $6,000 tax credit for novel parents in the first year of their child’s life.
Trump responds
In response to this proposal, the Trump campaign said that the former president “will always fight for America’s seniors – the ones Kamala Harris left behind,” it reported on Tuesday press release.
The campaign also cited Medicare Advantage politics extended by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in Trump’s first term.
It was repeated in the campaign GOP platform 2024in a chapter on protecting seniors, in which he stated that Trump would “prioritize the benefits of home care by reallocating resources back to in-home elder care, eliminating disincentives that lead to care worker shortages, and supporting unpaid family caregivers through tax credits and reducing bureaucracy.”
Harris and Howard Stern
Appearing live on “The Howard Stern Show” on Tuesday, shortly after “The View,” Harris called Trump a “frivolous man,” saying the consequences of him serving another term were “brutally serious.”
She also again criticized Trump for nominating three of the five members of the U.S. Supreme Court who voted to overturn Wade v. Wade in June 2022, ending nearly half a century of constitutional rights to abortion.
“And it’s not about abortion, you basically have a system now that says that as an individual you have no right to make decisions about your own body. The government has the right to make that decision for you,” she said.
Harris, who said if elected she would appoint a Republican to her cabinet, was asked if she would choose former Wyoming Republican Liz Cheney.
Cheney was vice chairman of the Jan. 6 U.S. House committee tasked with investigating the 2021 attack on the Capitol.
Harris did not reveal his preference, but said Cheney is “intelligent,” “remarkable” and a “dedicated public servant.”
Cheney is among the prominent Republicans who support Harris. She campaigned with a veep in Ripon, Wisconsin – the birthplace of the Republican Party – just last week.
Trump talks to Ben Shapiro
Meanwhile, Trump said Harris is “grossly incompetent” in an interview that aired Tuesday on “The Ben Shapiro Show.”
“Biden was incompetent, she is equally incompetent and in some ways she is more incompetent,” Trump told Shapiro, a conservative political commentator and co-founder of The Daily Wire, referring to President Joe Biden.
Trump also criticized Harris’ Monday interview “60 Minutes” CBS News saying that the veep “answers questions like a baby.”
“He answers questions in the most basic way and gets himself killed for it,” Trump added.
Look ahead to the Harris and Trump campaigns
Harris was also scheduled to appear on CBS’ “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” Tuesday night. He will also appear at a Univision town hall in Las Vegas, Nevada, which will air on Thursday.
Trump was scheduled to attend a roundtable with Latino leaders and a Univision town hall on Tuesday in Miami, but both events were postponed due to Hurricane Milton.
Trump is scheduled to deliver a speech on Wednesday in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Later in the day, he will continue his campaign in the Keystone State with a rally in Reading.
