Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris says she wants to create a home-based long-term care benefit under Medicare. She’s suggesting an historic change in the health care system for older adults and some younger people with disabilities. But her idea raises important political and policy questions. Harris describes the broad outlines of her plan in a hard-to-find fact sheet here. Oddly, [...]
Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has backed an earth-shattering idea: For the first time, traditional Medicare would pay for personal assistance at home and related long-term care. Currently, only Medicaid and certain Medicare managed care programs provide long-term care benefits. Harris endorsed the idea in an appearance on the television show The View and her staff heavily promoted her initiative [...]
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is working hard to win the support of older voters, but what would she do to address their many concerns if she is elected president? In a campaign that has not yet shown many of its policy cards, Harris has offered only the roughest sketch of a governing agenda. But her time as vice president [...]
Politicians love to say they “won’t touch” Social Security, as if leaving the program alone will protect older adults. In reality, a new study by two of my Urban Institute colleagues finds that failing to fix the program’s looming financial shortfall would throw 3.8 million seniors into poverty by 2045. Median promised benefits would decline by $5,900 (in 2022 dollars). [...]
This week’s second round of debates among Democratic presidential hopefuls is producing a (mostly healthy) conversation about health insurance. But for normal people, much of the argument is enormously confusing. What are these candidates talking about? And how are their plans different from today’s Medicare and from one another? One way to make this debate more comprehensible is to drop [...]