Kamala Harris Simply Rolled Out One Of The Greatest Proposals Of Her Marketing campaign. Why Have not You Heard Extra About It?

This text is a part of HuffPost’s biweekly politics e-newsletter. Click on right here to subscribe.

Kamala Harris this week proposed to have Medicare cowl in-home take care of seniors and folks with disabilities, in what would quantity to a significant growth of the beloved federal medical insurance program.

And whereas it doesn’t seem to have registered as such within the political dialog (extra on that in a minute), her plan made an impression on quite a lot of on a regular basis Individuals who heard about it.

Mike Jennings is one among them.

Jennings is an internet developer in northeast Kansas. About ten years in the past, he, his sister and his mom turned the first caregivers for his grandmother, who was then within the early phases of Alzheimer’s illness. She needed to dwell at dwelling, and the remainder of the household needed that too, Jennings informed me in a cellphone interview. However they couldn’t afford to rent in-home assist, so that they took on the accountability of caring for her themselves ― buying and selling shifts, juggling work and different obligations.

“We basically had to drop everything, it was all-hands-on-deck,” mentioned Jennings, who was in his mid-30s on the time.

It was particularly robust on his mom, Jennings mentioned, as a result of each time she dashed dwelling from work to assist with a care-related emergency, she felt like she was placing her job in jeopardy. And issues solely received worse as his grandmother’s situation deteriorated, requiring ever larger vigilance.

“She had gotten out of the house multiple times,” Jennings mentioned. “One time she got out during a particularly bad storm, and we couldn’t find her, and it turned out she was sitting in a neighbor’s truck. She was injured. We had to take her to the hospital.”

Ultimately the household discovered a reminiscence care unit they may afford inside an assisted residing facility, and so they paid for it with a mix of his grandmother’s pension and a state program for which she had lastly certified. However issues may need been totally different if a program like Harris’ Medicare proposal had existed on the time, Jennings mentioned.

“It would have been a lot less stress, a lot less money, a lot less pain … and I think my grandmother would have been happier,” Jennings mentioned. “Even if it’s not full-time, even if it’s part-time, it would have been such a weight lifted off our shoulders that I can’t even describe it.”

I find out about Jennings as a result of he quoted and responded to a put up I made on social media, on the day of the announcement, describing Harris’ proposal and its function. And he was not the one one.

Greater than 2.5 million individuals considered my merchandise on X/Twitter, in response to the positioning’s metrics. Dozens mentioned they too had struggled attempting to take care of family members at dwelling ― or, in lots of circumstances, had been struggling now.

This is able to have saved my household SO a lot ache and so many sleepless nights. ― @jessleeesq

My dad spent the final three years of my grandma’s life caring for her. Within the course of, any cash she’d saved up and he’d saved up evaporated. It will legitimately change lives, each for the individuals receiving care and their family members. ― @VerboseDebose

BRAVO! I spent years caring for my mom with out help, after which our solely selection was a nursing dwelling. ― @lkhwriter

I’m 71 and offering hours of each day care to my 68-year-old sister-in-law who incapable of caring for herself – she received unwell after retirement. Her pension is simply too excessive for Medicaid and I can’t in good conscience take monetary steps to make her eligible for it. If Medicare might assist us it might be great, as her revenue can’t cowl her wants in any respect. And I’m exhausted. ― @2DeCee

The response was not like any I’ve ever gotten from what was, kind of, a information bulletin a few marketing campaign proposal. And it reveals simply how huge a necessity Harris is attempting to deal with right here — though that significance appears to have eluded some within the political class.

Which brings us to their response.

The Harris marketing campaign had alerted reporters in regards to the impending announcement the day earlier than. That’s commonplace follow in campaigns, and when the proposal turned public at 5 a.m., a handful of shops (together with HuffPost) had tales able to go.

However full articles on Harris’ proposal didn’t seem in The New York Instances and the Washington Submit for a number of hours, and didn’t get a lot play on their homepages once they did. That proved emblematic. The house care proposal vanished from discuss reveals inside a day, and up to now it hasn’t drawn a lot protection within the opinion pages.

All of this displays judgments by editors and producers — and the marketing campaign professionals who discuss to them — that the proposal simply isn’t that essential. And from a reporter’s perspective, I get why.

This hasn’t been a hotly debated difficulty like, say, Obamacare has. It additionally feels a bit of pie-in-the-sky, because it’d probably require not only a Harris win however full Democratic management of Congress, which isn’t what polling fashions are predicting. The truth that Harris formally introduced it on “The View,” ABC’s daytime discuss present, in all probability made it really feel much less severe.

And that’s to say nothing of the ridiculously full information cycle, which incorporates not simply the marketing campaign but in addition two pure disasters and main battle within the Center East, to call just some huge tales. All people in politics is attempting to do an excessive amount of. All people has missed issues. I actually have.

Nonetheless, the relative lack of consideration to Harris’ proposal is greater than a bit of ironic given all of the grief she has taken for not placing ahead sufficient coverage, or not outlining a imaginative and prescient, or not distinguishing herself from President Joe Biden. Now she’s doing all three and the response is … a collective shrug?

It doesn’t need to be that method.

The essential problem with long-term care is that it’s terribly costly, with the prices of full-time take care of one particular person simply surpassing $100,000 a 12 months. 9 in 10 adults say it might be “impossible or very difficult” to pay such prices on their very own, in response to fall 2023 survey from the well being analysis group KFF. And it’s not like they’ve many locations +to show.

Medicare doesn’t presently cowl long-term care besides in restricted circumstances, and respectable non-public protection is nearly unattainable to search out. That leaves Medicaid, which varies by state and requires individuals to impoverish themselves or switch property earlier than they’ll qualify. Even then, it has limits on dwelling care, usually forcing individuals into nursing houses once they’d quite keep dwelling.

Harris’ answer is to make in-home care a daily Medicare profit, obtainable to all enrollees. Her marketing campaign didn’t present a ton of element — one more reason, I think, the political world didn’t pay quite a lot of consideration. However the official launch cited an impartial research that sketched out what such a program might appear like and estimated it might require about $40 billion a 12 months in new federal spending.

That works out to a ten-year determine approaching half a trillion {dollars}, after taking inflation under consideration. It might arguably symbolize the biggest growth of the welfare state for the reason that Reasonably priced Care Act, and the one largest funding in caregiving in fashionable historical past.

Harris has instructed offsetting a lot of the fee with financial savings from one other marketing campaign proposal, one designed to cut back Medicare spending by extracting decrease drug costs from producers. Whether or not that would supply sufficient cash and whether or not the fiscal tradeoffs are worthwhile are simply a number of the many questions Harris must reply if she had been elected and capable of pursue the proposal.

However no matter its very actual execs and cons, the Harris plan represents one of many first severe, high-profile efforts to deal with a necessity that’s more likely to contact most households ultimately, a technique or one other. That alone makes it worthy of extra consideration than it’s gotten up to now.

Simply have a look at response on social media. Or take heed to individuals like Mike Jennings.