Kamala Harris on Health Care Democratic candidate for President (withdrawn); California Senator

Allow Medicare to cover the cost of home care for seniors

Let Medicare cover the cost of home health care for seniors

Trump left us the worst public health epidemic in a century

TRUMP: Everybody knows what I'm going to do. Cut taxes very substantially. And create a great economy like I did before. We had the greatest economy. We got hit with a pandemic. We did a phenomenal job with the pandemic. We handed them over a country where the economy and where the stock market was higher than it was before the pandemic came in. Nobody's ever seen anything like it.

Cancel medical debt and cap drug costs

Ms Harris has also said that she would work with states to cancel medical debts. Again, her aim is laudable: it is scandalous that so many Americans are saddled with medical debt. Yet just cancelling debt would only reset the clock for them, with debts once again piling up whenever they need medical attention. "Why are health care costs so high in the first place? That's a legitimate question but it does not lend itself to quick fixes," says [a Columbia University analyst].

Take on Big Pharma to cap prescription drug costs

President Biden called on Congress to "give Medicare the power to negotiate lower prices for 500 drugs over the next decade." During her first campaign rally as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris pledged to "take on Big Pharma to cap prescription drug costs for all Americans."

Biden and Harris will hold a joint event in Maryland on Thursday touting the administration's efforts to lower costs for the American people. The Harris campaign said she will announce a policy proposal pertaining to prescription drug costs.

[For example] According to the Biden administration's negotiated price list, the 2023 list price for a 30-day supply of Januvia was $527. In 2026, Medicare will instead pay $113--or 79 percent less.

Prohibit medical debt from being included on credit reports

Vice President Harris is calling on states, local governments, and health care providers to take comprehensive action to reduce the burden of medical debt, including but not limited to:
• Leverage public dollars to purchase and eliminate medical debt;
• Prevent accumulation of medical debt and protect patients from aggressive debt collectors by expanding access to charity care; and
• Protect patients and consumers by limiting coercive debt collections practices by health care providers and third-party debt collectors.

Establish nursing home minimum staffing rule

The Nursing Home Minimum Staffing Rule finalized today will require all nursing homes that receive federal funding through Medicare and Medicaid to have 3.48 hours per resident per day of total staffing, including a defined number from both registered nurses (0.55 hours per resident per day) and nurse aides (2.45 per resident per day). This means a facility with 100 residents would need at least two or three RNs and at least ten or eleven nurse aides as well as two additional nurse staff.

Black women are 3 times more likely to die in childbirth

And because we are doing that, we see, for example, that in states before we started, only three of the states extended Medicaid coverage for postpartum care from 2 months to 12 months. And we issued the call and the challenge, and now 35 states have postpartum care up to 12 months.

Trump knew the truth on coronavirus and covered it up

On pre-existing conditions: Republicans are coming for you

COVID: track racial disparities; get vaccines to neediest

BIDEN: I will be prepared to do whatever it takes to save lives because we cannot get the country moving until we control the virus. That is the fundamental flaw of this administration's thinking to begin with. In order to keep the country running and moving and the economy growing, and people employed, you have to fix the virus, you have to deal with the virus. I would shut it down, I would listen to the scientists.

HARRIS: There are different needs based on different communities and that's why we talk about the need to track actually racial disparities -- disparities based on region, geographic region and do that now. So that when we have a vaccine, those communities that are most in need, will get them. That policy and that approach will be guided by the public health experts, unlike what we have seen now which are the politics guiding a public health crisis.

Supports single-payer without private insurance

Federal funding for PrEP to prevent HIV/AIDS

HARRIS: Gay black men are twice as likely to contract HIV and AIDS. One of the issues also that is relevant to this point is the affordability of medications such as PrEP, which is extremely expensive. I have been a leader in the US Senate to say that it should be covered by insurance and money should not be the barrier to access to PrEP, which is obviously a life-saving drug. In terms of HIV-AIDS rates among black men in particular, it is still much higher because the hierarchy still exists within the community around access to health care, housing, employment, and things of that nature. So I will, as president, I commit to you, deal with all of those, but also we need to deal with it in the context of having a commitment, which is my commitment, that within a generation we will end HIV-AIDS.

Medicare-for-All with 10-year transition and private option

HARRIS: I have been spending time in this campaign listening to American families, listening to experts, listening to health care providers, and what I came away with is a very clear understanding that I needed to create a plan that was responsive to the needs of the American people, understanding that insurance companies have been jacking up the prices for far too long. I listened to the American families who said four years is just not enough to transition into this new plan, so I devised a plan where it's going to be 10 years of a transition. I listened to American families who said I want an option that will be under your Medicare system that allows a private plan.

Cover everyone; don't leave out 10 million Americans

BIDEN: The plan costs $3 trillion [annually]. Ten years from now, after two terms of the senator being president, after her time. Secondly, it will require middle-class taxes to go up, not down. Thirdly, it will eliminate employer-based insurance. And fourthly, what happens in the meantime?

HARRIS: The cost of doing nothing is far too expensive. We are now paying $3 trillion a year for health care in America. Over the next 10 years, it's probably going to be $6 trillion. We must act. My plan is about immediately allowing people to sign up and get into coverage.

Separate employment from healthcare, but not illegal

HARRIS: My plan does not offer anything that is illegal. What it does is it separates the employer from healthcare, meaning that the kind of healthcare you get will not be a function of where you work. I have me met so many Americans who stick to a job that they do not like, where they are not prospering simply because they need the healthcare that that employer provides. It's time that we separate employers from the kind of healthcare people get and under my plan, we do that as it relates to the insurance and the pharmaceutical companies, who will not be taken to task by Senator Bennet's plan. We will do that.

BENNET: We need to be honest about what's in this plan. It bans employer based insurance and taxes the middle class to the tune of $30 trillion

For-profit insurers jack up co-pays and deductibles

Harris: In terms of the point that Senator Gillibrand is raising, I couldn't agree more. Senator Biden, your plan will keep and allow insurance companies to remain with status quo, doing business as usual, and that's going to be about jacking up co-pays, jacking up deductibles.

Huge profits for insurance; pharma on backs of families

Kamala Harris: Let's talk about math. Let's talk about the fact that pharmaceutical and insurance companies last year profited $72 billion on the backs of American families. Under your plan, you do nothing to hold the insurance companies to task for what they have been doing to American families. Today diabetes patients, one in four cannot afford insulin. For those people who have overdosed from an opioid, there is a syringe that costs $4,000 that will save their life. It is immoral. It is untenable.

$5000 deductible demonstrates flaws of for profit system

Supports Medicare for All, even undocumented aliens

A: I support Medicare-for-All, and the vision of what it will be includes an expansion of coverage. Medicare-for-All will include vision. It will include dental. It will include hearing aids.

Q: You support giving universal health care to people in this country illegally?

A: I'm opposed to any policy that would deny in our country any human being from access to public safety, public education, or public health, period.

Private insurance not victims under single payer

Make healthcare fundamental right, not privilege for wealthy

We need our leaders to speak the truth that we have an economy where the cost of health care, housing, and education are going up, but paychecks aren't growing fast enough to keep up.

Let's fight for an America where the economy works for working people. An America where health care and education are fundamental rights, not a privilege for the wealthy few.

End private health insurance with Medicare for All

• Health care: Move to universal, government-run health care, or "Medicare for All."
• Harris backs the "Medicare for All" bill sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.
• That bill would establish government-run health care system that allows every American to have access to care and end private health insurance as it currently exists.
• The bill would pay for that system in part with a 6.2 percent charge on employers, a 2.2 percent fee on most families that would vary at some income levels, increased marginal tax rates for incomes $250,000 and higher, increased taxes on capital gains, and an increased estate tax for the wealthiest.
• Harris has also introduced bills to increase access to mental health care and address high maternal mortality rates for black women.

We pay more for prescriptions than abroad: they negotiate

Why are Americans paying so much more for the medications we need? Because, unlike many other advanced countries, the U.S. government doesn't negotiate prices on prescription drugs. When a government is purchasing medicines in bulk, it can negotiate a better price and pass those cost savings to consumers.

Medicare, which covers about 55 million people, could have incredible bargaining power to drive significantly lower prescription prices through negotiation. But lawmakers from both parties, at the behest of the pharmaceutical lobby, have prohibited Medicare from doing so.

Require pharmaceutical companies to allow generics

Companies should provide contraception under ObamaCare

"Under the ACA, all Americans have the right to access affordable, quality healthcare, including contraception. For-profit companies should not be able to deny women access to healthcare based on the religious beliefs of the company's owners. The 10th circuit ruling should be reversed by the US Supreme Court."

The list of ObamaCare exemptions includes one on religion: anyone who is "conscientiously opposed to accepting any insurance benefits," which some say includes Muslim groups. This portion of the law was apparently written specifically for the Amish, but it may play a role in the fight over ObamaCare.

Opposes repealing mandated health insurance.

The Christian Coalition Voter Guide inferred whether candidates agree or disagree with the statement, 'Repealing the Nationalized Health Care System that Forces Citizens to Buy Insurance or Pay Fines' The Christian Coalition notes, "You can help make sure that voters have the facts BEFORE they cast their votes. We have surveyed candidates in the most competitive congressional races on the issues that are important to conservatives."