Harris to announce plan for Medicare home care benefit

Vice President Harris will announce a plan Tuesday to offer a new Medicare benefit for home care for seniors in an effort to focus on the challenges of caregivers, according to a senior campaign official.

She will announce her proposal for the first-ever expansion of Medicare to include at-home care on ABC’s “The View,” where the senior campaign official says she can reach the “sandwich generation” audience. The so-called “sandwich generation” is thought to be made up of Americans who are both raising children and caring for their own aging parents.

Harris will argue that the plan, along with her proposals to lower the cost of child care, aims to ease the financial burdens of that generation. The sandwich generation demographic includes nearly one-quarter of Americans and has a large percentage of undecided voters, according to the senior campaign official.

The plan for a Medicare home care benefit would cover services like an in-home aide, aiming to allow families to avoid the high cost of sending older relatives to live in senior facilities.

The vice president, if elected, would propose having the benefit paid for by expanding Medicare drug price negotiations, increasing the discounts drug manufacturers cover for certain brand-name drugs in Medicare, and cracking down on hidden costs from Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs), which have reportedly acted to drive up prices, according to her campaign.

Harris has talked about caregiving for her mother, Shyamala, when her mother had cancer and she is expected to talk about personal experience with taking care of family members when announcing the new plan.

The Harris campaign sees caregiving as a mobilizing issue for female voters, especially older women concerned about their own financial security, the senior campaign official said. Seniors in particular are a voting bloc Harris is working to grow to support her in the election, the official added.