Kamala Harris’s “Medicare at Home” Plan Is Revolutionary. Why Aren’t We Talking About It?
Perhaps the most undercovered actual policy proposal of the presidential campaign is the vice president’s notion that home care for the elderly and infirm be covered under Medicare. Advocates have been beating down doors for years trying to get someone to listen to the appeals from elderly spouses and overwhelmed adult children for some respite or relief from what Alzheimer’s activists refer to as “the thirty-six-hour day.” (My family has some, ahem, experience with this.) Estimates from the Alzheimer’s Association hold that some 11 million Americans are supplying unpaid home health care in these situations and that this labor-intensive work is worth an estimated $350 billion.This is a revolutionary proposal, and people should be debating it fiercely up one side of the campaign and down the other. It should be worth a massive bushel of votes for the Democratic ticket. Instead, the elite political press has greeted it with a self-satisfied shrug and moved on to whatever the daily fauxtrage is. Interestingly, though, House Speaker Mike Johnson had some thoughts to share about health care under a second Trump administration, and he shared them with an audience in Pennsylvania. From The New York Times:“Health care reform’s going to be a big part of the agenda,” Mr. Johnson said, speaking at a campaign stop in Pennsylvania and describing what Republicans would do with their first 100 days in office if they are successful in keeping control of the House. “No Obamacare?” a voter called out. “No Obamacare,” Mr. Johnson responded. “The A.C.A. is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work, and we’ve got a lot of ideas on how to do that.”In other words, according to Speaker Moses, the Affordable Care Act, whatever its flaws, seems to be working, and people seem to have become comfortable with it and have come to rely on its benefits, so now it’s time to blow it up in favor of whatever “concepts of a plan” his party’s standard-bearer blurts out from one cozy interview to another.Mr. Johnson added that there was a “docs caucus” made up of Republican physicians who serve in the House who have “a menu of options” they were reviewing, including a sweeping overhaul. “We want to take a blowtorch to the regulatory state,” Mr. Johnson said. His comments were first reported by NBC News.The “docs caucus” of House Republicans contains some real beauties, beginning with former White House physician and Pez dispenser Ronny Jackson, who looks at the orange-topped blancmange for whom he used to work and sees, instead, Thor, with a nine-iron instead of a hammer. Other stars in the galaxy include Andy Harris from Maryland, who derides the notion of human-based climate change and who was also one of the first jamokes to blame offshore wind farms for the death of whales; Mark Green of Tennessee, who began his career as a vaccine denialist; and Green’s colleague, the inexcusable Scott DesJarlais, who has been re-elected six times since a scandal broke open in which the congressman was found to have bullied an ex-wife into two abortions before they were married, as well as admitting during his divorce proceedings to a carnal carnival unseen by the House since the death of Wilbur Mills. From the Chattanooga Times Free Press:Obtained by the Chattanooga Times Free Press, the couple’s 2001 trial transcript also confirms DesJarlais had sexual relationships with at least two patients, three coworkers and a drug representative while he was chief of staff at Grandview Medical Center in Jasper, Tenn. During one affair with a female patient, DesJarlais prescribed her drugs, gave her an $875 watch and bought her a plane ticket to Las Vegas, records show.DesJarlais, who is now 48 years old, admitted in court to pressuring the woman over the phone to get an abortion, but said the whole conversation was a scheme orchestrated by him and his wife—with whom he had reconciled—to get the 24-year-old to admit she was not really pregnant. “She goes, ‘I will have an abortion. This will never be a problem of yours,’ ” DesJarlais said. “And I think that she was trying to get me to pay her money and I refused to because there was no proof of the pregnancy.” Under oath, DesJarlais said he and his wife recorded his phone conversation with the woman “to find out whether the girl was telling the truth or not.” That directly contradicts the congressman’s campaign Facebook page, where he told supporters the phone conversation “was recorded without my knowledge.”Christamighty, Tennessee. Have some pride, will you?Anyway, that’s where the health-care debate stands less than a week before the election. The Democratic candidate wants to keep the current, very popular system and add to Medicare an opportunity for worn-out family caregivers to go out and catch a movie once or twice. The guy who is for the moment the country’s most powerful Republican wants to bring us all back to the days of preexisting conditions and all the other depredations of the insurance industry. Those are the concepts of his plan, anyway.Mr. Trump’s campaign quickly disavowed the statement, which a spokeswoman said was “not President Trump’s policy position.”I’ll bet it did. Back under the bus, Moses. You’re a week early.