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Advocates Applaud Harris' Plan for Medicare to Cover Home Health Aides
"In this presidential election, we have the choice between a candidate who has a plan for working families and one who has only offered 'concepts of a plan,' including gutting the Affordable Care Act," said one labor leader.
Oct 08, 2024
Labor unions and consumer advocates were among those applauding Tuesday after U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris announced her proposal for home healthcare coverage under Medicare—a broadly popular idea, according to polls, that supporters said would be a "game-changer" for millions of families.
On the ABC talk show "The View," Harris spoke about the "sandwich generation"—middle-aged Americans who find themselves caring for aging parents while they're also raising their own children.
"There are so many people in our country who are right in the middle," said the Democratic presidential nominee. "And it's just, almost, impossible to do it all, especially if they work. We're finding that so many are then having to leave their job, which means losing a source of income, not to mention the emotional stress. And so what I am proposing is that basically what we will do is allow Medicare to cover in-home healthcare."
Medicare currently only covers in-home healthcare for short periods of time, such as in cases of a patient recovering from surgery. But the number of aging Americans who need need prolonged healthcare at home is expected to explode in the coming years as members of the baby boomer generation reach their 80s.
Medicaid covers home care for low-income people who are elderly or have disabilities, but waiting lists are long and beneficiaries are required to max out their savings before qualifying.
Covering at-home healthcare for Medicare's 67 million beneficiaries would "provide much-needed relief and financial support" to about 37 million people who currently provide unpaid eldercare to their family members, said former Labor Secretary Robert Reich.
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of consumer advocacy watchdog Public Citizen, said that "home health expansion through Medicare is a smart and desperately needed place to start" on the road to expanding and improving Medicare.
"This important expansion would finally allow Medicare to cover crucial services where many beneficiaries would prefer to receive them—in the safety and comfort of their homes," said Gilbert. "Such an expansion would lay the groundwork for even further improvements and expansions to Medicare including hearing, dental, and vision services. A low out-of-pocket cap on medical expenses would ensure seniors can afford to get the care they need, and by reining in Medicare Advantage overpayments, we could fund many of these priorities."
Service Employees International Union (SEIU) president April Verrett said the plan offers the latest contrast between Harris and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who aims to repeal the Affordable Care Act and has said he has "concepts of a plan" to replace the law.
"Along with her proposals to invest in childcare, in paid leave, and to make Medicaid investments in home care, as well as lower costs for working families and raising wages for care workers, Kamala Harris is showing that she's been listening to working families," said Verrett. "In this presidential election, we have the choice between a candidate who has a plan for working families and one who has only offered 'concepts of a plan,' including gutting the Affordable Care Act and the nonsensical idea of paying for childcare through tariffs, which would actually raise prices."
"Care workers rallied to elect President [Joe] Biden and Vice President Harris, and this administration has demonstrated again and again that they stand with us," added Verrett. "Now we need to finish the job with Kamala Harris as president, making home care accessible to all and delivering the historic investment in care that our nation desperately needs."
The vice president said Medicare negotiations over drug prices, which were begun under the Biden administration over the objections of Republicans and which she supports expanding, would pay for the new Medicare benefit.
"Part of what I also intend to do is allow Medicare to continue to negotiate drug prices against these big pharmaceutical companies, which means we are going to save Medicare the money, because we're not going to be paying these high prices, and that those resources are best then put in a way that helps a family," said Harris.
Gilbert expressed hope that the new benefit, which would need to be approved by Congress, would be just one step toward expanding Medicare coverage to all Americans.
"We must continue to expand the availability of Medicare by lowering the qualifying age," she said, "so we can finally build a healthcare system that ensures that every American can get the care they need when they need it without going bankrupt."
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On Labor Day, Champions of Working Class Vow to Defeat Trump
"The facts are clear: Democrats are the party of labor, and the Biden-Harris administration has been the most pro-labor administration in our lifetime," said a pair of supporters.
Sep 02, 2024
With the Labor Day holiday as a backdrop, U.S. union leaders on Monday reiterated their message that a Democratic administration led by Vice President Kamala Harris would offer far better policies for workers than a Republican one with former President Donald Trump at the helm.
Echoing Harris' resonant "We are not going back" campaign slogan, Communications Workers of America president Claude Cummings Jr. said that "we are not going back because we have the opportunity to elect Kamala Harris, a true champion for working people, who has a vision for the future where we all have more control over our own lives, not less."
"Last month, as our members at AT&T Southeast were preparing to go on strike, Donald Trump laughed with notorious union buster Elon Musk about firing striking workers," he continued. "Today that would be illegal, but if he's elected president, Trump will have the plan and the power to take us back to a time when it wasn't."
"Donald Trump's allies, including many people he appointed to serve in his administration, want to take us back to the days before the NLRA," he contended, referring to the landmark National Labor Relations Act signed into law by Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1935. "Their dangerous, extremist agenda, detailed in a handbook known as Project 2025, calls for increasing corporate control over workers. They want to appoint [National Labor Relations Board] members who will stop enforcing large parts of the NLRA, including the ban on company unions."
Harris, who was in Detroit Monday, said: "On Labor Day, we honor workers, unions, and the entire labor movement fighting for fair wages, good benefits, and safer working conditions for all. As president, I will always stand with workers, because when unions are strong, the middle class is strong. And when the middle class is strong, America is strong."
In her second annual "State of the Unions" address, Liz Shuler, president of the AFL-CIO, the nation's largest federation of unions, highlighted the importance of organized labor in November's election. Shuler noted that 1 in 5 voters in the battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and, Minnesota is a union member, and that recent polling shows Harris with a 15-point lead over Trump among union voters.
"Union workers are growing our power in this country in a way that we haven't seen in a generation. In November, that power could win the election for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz," she said, referring to the Minnesota governor who is the Democratic vice presidential nominee.
"We can run up the margins where it counts," Shuler added. "When you ask a union member who their most trusted source in the world is on politics, it's not their friends, family, or loved ones—it's their fellow union member. There is no question that the road to the White House runs through America's union halls."
While numerous unions have endorsed Harris, Trump has struggled in his efforts to court organized labor, despite strong support among rank-and-file workers. Last week, members of the International Association of Fire Fighters booed GOP vice presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. JD Vance of Ohio after he claimed that he was part of the"most pro-worker Republican ticket in history."
While support for unions in the United States is at a seven-decade high, union membership remains at an all-time low, the result of more than a century of efforts by capitalist interests and the politicians they influence to weaken organized labor. One way they've done this is by McCarthyite purges of communists and socialists, traditionally the strongest champions for working people, from union ranks.
Today, labor leaders overwhelmingly concur which of the two major parties offers workers a better deal—even as it attacks democracy by fighting to exclude pro-worker competitors to its left.
"The facts are clear: Democrats are the party of labor, and the Biden-Harris administration has been the most pro-labor administration in our lifetime," Service Employees International Union president April Verrett and Democracy Alliance president Pamela Shifman said in an opinion piece published by The Hill on Monday.
"As we look ahead, the choice we face in this election couldn't be more stark," they wrote. "One path leads to a brighter, more inclusive future for all workers—a future where economic, gender, and racial justice go hand in hand. The other path seeks to turn back the clock, dismantling the progress we've made and putting corporate interests ahead of working families."
Civil rights icon Dolores Huerta, who co-founded the United Farm Workers union with Cesar Chavez—the late grandfather of Harris' campaign manager—in 1962, on Monday published a Univisionopinion piece in which she argued that "this election marks a pivotal moment in our history."
"Each of us will have a choice to make about which direction we want our country to go," she said. "Donald Trump despises Latinos, workers, and immigrants and wants to turn back the clock to a time before many of us had full rights and freedoms, when the rich did well while the middle class was left behind. We cannot go back!"
"I choose to go forward, into the future," Huerta continued. "A future that makes room for all Latino families. A future where our middle class is strong, our freedoms are secure, and our democracy is sound. That's what Vice President Harris is fighting for. And that's why I'm all-in to elect Vice President Harris the next president of the United States... ¡Sí se puede!"
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Congressional Progressives Unveil 'Bold' Agenda for Second Biden Term
The Congressional Progressive Caucus says its legislative blueprint for 2025 and beyond aims to "deliver equality, justice, and economic security for working people."
Apr 18, 2024
The Congressional Progressive Caucus on Thursday published a "comprehensive domestic policy legislative agenda" for U.S. President Joe Biden's possible second White House term that seeks to "deliver equality, justice, and economic security for working people."
The CPC's Progressive Proposition Agenda is a seven-point plan aimed at lowering the cost of living, boosting wages and worker power, advancing justice, combating climate change and protecting the environment, strengthening democracy, breaking the corporate stranglehold on the economy, and bolstering public education.
"Progressives are proud to have been part of the most significant Democratic legislative accomplishments of this century. We have made real progress for everyday Americans—but there's much more work to be done," Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said in a statement.
"That's why the Progressive Caucus has identified these popular, populist, and possible solutions," she added. "Democrats in Congress can meet the urgent needs people are facing; rewrite the rules to ensure majorities of this country are no longer barred from the American promise of equality, justice, and economic opportunity; and motivate people with a vision of progressive governance under Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and a Democratic White House."
Progressive lawmakers have already introduced bills for many items on the agenda, including a Green New Deal for Public Schools, expanding the Supreme Court, comprehensive voting rights protection, and legalizing marijuana.
Critics noted the conspicuous absence of Medicare for All—once a top progressive agenda item—and foreign policy issues including ending Israel's genocide, apartheid, occupation, settler colonization, and ethnic cleansing in Palestine.
Jayapal toldNBC News that the CPC is focusing its blueprint exclusively on domestic goals—especially ones it feels can be achieved.
"The way we came to this agenda is to say that we were going to put into this agenda things that were populist and possible... and affected a huge number of people," she said. "We haven't taken a position on particularly Israel and Gaza in the progressive caucus, and so that's not on here."
The CPC agenda is backed by a wide range of labor, climate, environmental, civil rights, consumer, faith-based, and other organizations.
"The Congressional Progressive Caucus is leading the way for Congress to address the major issues affecting working families, from reducing healthcare and housing costs to strengthening workers' rights to join unions, earn living wages and benefits, and have safe workplaces," Service Employees International Union president Mary Kay Henry said in a statement.
"SEIU is proud to partner with the CPC to move these priorities forward and build a more equitable economy in which corporations are held accountable for their actions," she added.
Mary Small, chief strategy officer at Indivisible, said: "House progressives were the engine at the heart of our legislative accomplishments in 2021 and 2022. They've continued that momentum to be true governing partners to the Biden administration as those laws and programs are implemented."
"That's why Indivisible is so supportive of the CPC's Proposition Agenda, a bold vision for progressive governance in 2025 and beyond. From reproductive rights to saving our democracy to economic security for all, the CPC is driving forward exactly the sort of legislative goals we want to see in our next governing moment."
That moment is far from guaranteed, with not only the White House hanging in the balance as Biden will all but certainly face former Republican President Donald Trump in November's election but also the Senate Democratic Caucus clinging to a single-seat advantage over the GOP. Republicans currently hold the House of Representatives by a five-seat margin.
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