Kamala Harris Proposes Medicare Home Health Care Coverage

VaselineOctober 8, 2024

0 2 minutes read

Kamala Harris Proposes Medicare Home Health Care Coverage

Vice President Kamala Harris announced a proposal for Medicare to cover long-term care at home, addressing a major expense.

Currently, Medicare does not cover long-term care costs, which means Americans must find other ways to pay for long-term care. And those costs can be high: A home health aide can cost as much as $75,500 annually, according to the 2023 Genworth Cost of Care survey, while a semi-private room in a skilled nursing facility can cost $104,000.

Speaking to “The View” on Tuesday, Harris cited a desire to support people’s “independence” and “dignity” through the proposal, saying, “People have declining skills, to some extent, but their dignity, their pride has not low. They want to stay at home, they don’t want to go anywhere else. Plus, for the family to send them to a residential care facility, to hire someone, it’s so expensive.”

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The Democratic presidential candidate, who cited his own experience caring for his mother who died of cancer in 2009, also suggested the proposal would help members of the “sandwich generation,” who care for both their parents, as well as their own children at the same time. time.

“We’re finding that so many are having to leave their jobs, which means leaving a source of income. Not to mention the emotional stress,” she said.

This is likely a popular proposition given the high costs of home health care and ongoing calls for it to be covered by Medicare. The Center for Medicare Advocacy told Kiplinger in a statement that it “strongly supports this proposal to improve Medicare coverage for continuing home care.”

“Access to services and assistance at home for those unable to independently carry out activities of daily living would provide immeasurable help to millions of beneficiaries and their families and is an important step forward for the Medicare program,” the Advocacy Center said Medicare. . In order to maximize access to care for people who need it, the expansion of home care coverage in Medicare should be combined with the application of benefits now present for people who qualify for both qualifying and nursing services.

How would Medicare pay for home care?

Of course, this proposal would come with a price, and that price is estimated to be around $40 billion, according to a recent analysis by the Brookings Institution.

vice president. Kamala Harris explains her proposal for Medicare to cover home health care for seniors: “It’s about independence for that individual.” pic.twitter.com/09Lkz9DXQlOctober 8, 2024

Harris, of “The View,” addressed the question of how she would plan to pay for the plan: “Part of what I plan to do is allow Medicare to continue to negotiate drug prices against these big pharmaceutical companies, which means We’re going to save Medicare money because we’re not going to pay these high prices.”

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) began negotiating with pharmaceutical companies over drug prices as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022.

The prices of the first 10 Medicare-negotiated drugs were announced in August, and the Congressional Budget Office estimated that Medicare would save $100 billion over the next 10 years as a result of the negotiations. Medicare is set to begin negotiations for 15 more drugs in 2025.

In addition, the Democratic 2024 platform calls for expanding “traditional Medicare coverage to include dental, vision and hearing services.”

VaselineOctober 8, 2024

0 2 minutes read

Vaseline

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