REPORT: Harris’ plan for in-home elder care will cost tens of billions more than projected

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From the New York Post: Vice President Kamala Harris’ new plan for Medicare to cover the costs of in-home care for seniors will cost tens of billions of dollars more than her campaign projects, economists and experts told The Post.

Harris, 59, announced her plan during her media blitz on Tuesday, saying: “It’s just about helping an aging parent or person — you know — prepare a meal, put their sweater on” while relieving Americans of the cost of transferring loved ones to a residential care facility.

The “Medicare at Home” initiative would pay for health aides to assist seniors who “are unable to independently perform activities of daily living like bathing, eating, and going to the bathroom and/or face serious cognitive impairment,” according to a Harris campaign press release.

While the Harris team cites a Brookings Institution white paper that estimates the program cost at $40 billion, the proposal’s details are scant about how it “will be fully paid for” by negotiating lower prescription drug prices, cracking down on pharmaceutical benefit managers, “addressing Medicare fraud” and implementing “international tax reform.”

The Democratic presidential nominee is also promising the benefit will extend to “all of our nation’s seniors and those with disabilities on Medicare,” which currently serves at least 67 million Americans.

The report cites Mark Warshawsky, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) focused on long-term care issues, as explaining that Harris’ plan “will be very expensive for the taxpayer” and a “much larger” price tag than the Democratic campaign is estimating to expand in-home care, which currently costs $130 billion nationwide.

“There are so many people in our country who fall in the Sandwich Generation. They’re taking care of their kids and they’re taking care of their aging parents. It’s just almost impossible to do it all. So I am proposing that we allow Medicare to cover in-home health care,” Harris declared.

Responses on social media:

Here’s another policy Harris can’t expain how she will pay for… from 60 Minutes:

Vice President Harris’ economic plan includes an expanded child tax credit and tax breaks for first-time homebuyers and small business startups.

But a nonpartisan organization found the plan would add more than $3 trillion to the federal deficit. Bill Whitaker asks her how she plans to pay for it.

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