Harris proposes that families benefit from Medicare for in-home elder care

• VP Kamala Harris proposed Medicare coverage for senior home care.
• The proposal is intended to appeal to families stuck between childcare and grandparents.
• Currently, Medicare does not fully cover long-term services such as home aides.

Vice President Kamala Harris wants to make it easier for struggling families to care for him BOYS and simultaneously aging parents.

During an interview Tuesday on “The View,” Harris proposed a first Medicare benefit to cover home care needs for older adults. According to a senior campaign official who anticipated the announcement, the plan is intended to appeal to the “sandwich generation,” or adults who are raising children while also caring for aging parents.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 37.1 million people—14 percent of the U.S. population—provide unpaid care for the elderly in the country, and nearly 4.5 million people are in this stage of life.

The official said Harris’ proposal would cover services such as home care aides, allowing seniors and families to avoid the high costs of a nursing facility or nursing home. This proposal follows previous plans announced by Harris to lower child care costs, including an expansion of the child tax credit and a $6,000 tax cut for families with newborns.

“There are so many people in our country who are right in the middle,” Harris said during the interview. “They’re looking after their kids and looking after their aging parents and it’s almost impossible to do it all, especially if they’re working. We find that so many are forced to leave their jobs. , which means the loss of a source of income, not to mention the emotional stress.”

Additionally, according to a fact sheet from the Harris campaign, the “Medicare at Home” initiative would offer coverage on a sliding scale for those with modest to higher incomes to tailor coverage to the needs of older adults.

Medicare currently does not fully cover the costs of long-term services such as home aides, and the costs of elder care continue to rise. According to a recent survey from Genworth, a long-term care insurance company, the average cost of home care was $75,504 in 2023 — up from just over $68,000 in 2022.

At the same time, childcare costs remain high – a report from Bank of America earlier this year found that the average couple with two children spent more than 30% of their combined salary on childcare costs, leaving families with care for both children and older adults. a financial connection.

Harris’ campaign official said her proposal to cover the costs of home care would be paid for by expanding Medicare drug price negotiations and increasing rebates that drugmakers cover for certain brand-name drugs under Medicare, among other things.

Along with Home Medicare, the Harris campaign outlined a proposal to expand Medicare to include vision and hearing coverage.

Childcare and eldercare were central points of the presidential campaign. While former President Donald Trump has not offered specifics on how he will address child care costs — he said during remarks in September at the Economic Club of New York that he would raise rates when asked about child care costs — his pick for vice president , JD Vance, has previously suggested that grandparents help more with childcare.

Vance later elaborated on his remarks during the Oct. 1 vice presidential debate, saying families need more child care options: “One of the biggest complaints I hear from young families is people who feel they don’t have they have options that they choose. between going to work or taking care of their children is an incredible burden to place on American families.”

With a rapidly aging population in the US, caring for older adults is likely to become a more widespread problem. However, it is unclear whether Congress will approve Harris’ proposal; President Joe Biden previously proposed the elder care expansion, which eventually made it into his bipartisan infrastructure bill of 2021.

Are you in the “sandwich” stage of life? Share your story with this reporter [email protected].