Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Kamala Harris' Health Plan That Both Keeps Insurers And Expands Medicare Draws Fire From All Sides
The Associated Press: Kamala Harris’ New Health Plan Draws Critics From All Sides
Kamala Harris released a health care proposal on Monday that sought to bridge the Democratic Party’s disparate factions. Instead, she drew criticism from rivals across the political spectrum. Progressives took issue with the presidential candidate for stopping short of the full-scale health care overhaul embodied by the “Medicare for All” legislation. Her more moderate rivals, meanwhile, said she was trying to have it all without taking a firm position on one of the most animating issues in the primary. The onslaught offered a preview of the Democrat-on-Democrat fighting that will likely unfold over two nights of presidential debates that begin on Tuesday. (Summers, 7/29)
The Washington Post: Harris Reaches For Middle Ground On Health Care, And Is Immediately Attacked
Harris’s rivals argued that in trying to address those concerns while continuing to say she favors Medicare-for-all, she was trying to have it both ways. Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir suggested that Harris was claiming the mantle of Medicare-for-all while advocating a far more modest policy. “So continues her gradual backdown from Medicare For All,” Shakir tweeted. “This is why you want a candidate with a lifetime of consistency and a track record on the big issues facing us.” (Janes, 7/29)
CNN: Bernie Sanders Says Kamala Harris' Health Care Plan Is 'Not Medicare For All'
Josh Orton, the Sanders campaign's policy director, told CNN, "It's bad policy, bad politics, and compared to Medicare for All it vastly expands the ability for private insurance corporations to profit from overbilling and denying care to vulnerable patients who need it the most." On the role private insurance companies play in Harris' plan, the Sanders campaign's chief of staff Ari Rabin-Havt, told CNN, "It would give a lot of money and a lot of power to private insurance companies over people's health care, and that's not what we believe in." (Grayer and Nobles, 7/29)
Politico: Rivals Unload On Kamala Harris’ Health Plan From Left And Right
Former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign charged Harris with flip-flopping on her support for Sanders’ Medicare for All bill while still proposing a plan that would "unravel the hard-won Affordable Care Act that the Trump Administration is trying to undo right now.” “This new, have-it-every-which-way approach pushes the extremely challenging implementation of the Medicare for All part of this plan ten years into the future, meaning it would not occur on the watch of even a two-term administration,” said Kate Bedingfield, a Biden deputy campaign manager. “The result? A Bernie Sanders-lite Medicare for All and a refusal to be straight with the American middle class, who would have a large tax increase forced on them with this plan.” (Cadelago, Otterbein and Diamond, 7/29)
The Hill: Biden Campaign Slams Harris On 'Have-It-Every-Which-Way' Health Plan
Harris’s plan seeks to find the path between the total elimination of private insurance under the Sanders version of Medicare for All, and Biden’s public option plan, which would strengthen the Affordable Care Act and keep employer-sponsored insurance in place. Harris has gone back and forth on whether she would eliminate private insurance. Her new plan would seek to expand coverage while preserving a role for private insurance companies. (Weixel, 7/29)
The Hill: Sanders Takes Swipe At Harris Health Care Proposal
Her proposal did not have many details about how the transition would work or how it would be financed, but the plan promises not to raise middle-class taxes. Harris's proposal would not tax families making less than $100,000. (Weixel, 7/29)
The Washington Post Fact Checker: Fact Check On Medicare-For-All Taxes
Harris signaled in mid-July that she was distancing herself from complete support of Sanders’s Medicare-for-all plan — even though she was a co-sponsor of his bill — when she objected to what she called a “middle-class tax hike” embedded in the bill. On July 29, she unveiled her own plan in a post on Medium — a hybrid version that extends the phase-in to a new system from four to 10 years and allows a role for insurance companies (which Sanders’s plan would bar) to participate. For the purposes of this fact check, she also would carve out a big exemption for paying payroll taxes to fund the system. In her Medium post, Harris attacked a proposal by Sanders to levy a 4 percent tax on income above $29,000, saying it “hits the middle class too hard.” But Sanders insists that the middle class will save money on his proposal. So what’s going on here? (Kessler, 7/30)
In other 2020 news —
Politico: The 2020 Dem Who May Actually Know How To Fix Health Care
Jay Inslee is running for president as the climate change candidate. But the two-term Washington governor can credibly claim to have accomplished more than most of his peers on health care, a key issue in the 2020 campaign. He created both the nation’s first public option and universal long-term care benefit — albeit a limited one — has run a successful Obamacare market, and expanded reproductive rights. His administration has also pushed forward a new plan for controlling drug costs, expanded Medicaid coverage to transgender patients and added programs for school children aimed at preventing chronic diseases later in life. (Goldberg, 7/28)
Kaiser Health News: ‘If You Like Your Plan, You Can Keep It.’ Biden’s Invokes Obama’s Troubled Claim.
Joe Biden invoked a risky — and familiar — phrase to sell his health care plan. At an AARP event in Iowa, Biden told voters he would create a government insurance plan to compete with private ones called a public option. It would give consumers, Biden said, another choice. “If you like your employer-based plan, you can keep it,” Biden said July 15. “If you have private insurance, you can keep it.” It was a time warp moment that whipped us back to 2013. (Greenberg, 7/30)
Boston Globe: The High Cost Of Housing Emerges As A Presidential Campaign Issue
As Democratic hopefuls vie to stand out in a crowded field and appeal to urban voters stressed by rising rents, more candidates are bringing up housing on the campaign trail. Several of them have rolled out plans aimed at tackling problem that’s reaching crisis levels in Boston and other cities. (Logan, 7/29)
