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Vice President Kamala Harris has proposed adding home care benefits to Medicare.
The new Medicare at Home program would provide evaluation services and home health aide services. The aides could help older people with activities such as eating and bathing.
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Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, say they want to use four major streams of new revenue and new federal savings to pay for the program:
- Savings produced by the new federal Medicare drug price negotiation process.
- Savings from a crackdown on Medicare fraud.
- The tax revenue generated by imposing new rules on pharmacy benefit managers.
- The new revenue generated by making international tax changes that "stop encouraging companies to shift jobs and profits overseas."
The Harris campaign is also emphasizing its support for providing up to $6,000 in child tax credit subsidies per child.
What it means: Harris said the new caregiver support programs could help employers by making caregiver workers more productive.
Success at starting the program could also add to momentum in the private long-term care insurance, by creating new ways for private insurers to provide arrangements that wrap around government program benefits.
In 2023, for example, Federal Life, John Hancock and Transamerica all introduced universal life policies designed to help workers create vehicles for paying for long-term care costs.
The thinking: The elder care and child care proposals are part of a Harris plan to "support the sandwich generation," or people who care for young children and older relatives at the same time.
"Harris cared for her aging mother and knows that when families cannot find affordable care for their elderly parents or children, it is not just a big financial strain, but also a source of severe emotional stress that takes a big toll on families," according to her campaign.
The Medicare at Home program would "draw upon best practices across Medicare plans as well as the private sector to expand the home care workforce, partner with technology companies in areas such as remote patient monitoring and telehealth services," according to the program announcement.
Many of the ideas are based on the work of researchers at Georgetown University and the Brookings Institution, the Harris campaign says.
Medicaid estate recovery: The Medicare at Home proposal is part of a package of ideas that also includes adding eye exam benefits and hearing aid benefits to Medicare and eliminating state moves to seize the homes of homeowners who use Medicaid nursing home benefits to pay for care.
"Currently, states have the right to seize the family homes of recently deceased Medicaid beneficiaries," the Harris campaign says. "This practice, known as 'Medicaid estate recovery,' means that those homes are not passed on to the seniors' children, which particularly harms rural and minority families and prevents them from building wealth."
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Allison Bell
Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.
