Medicare covering long-term home care is big deal

I’m to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ left on most issues. I’ve been discouraged as her campaign increasingly pivots to the center in the lead-up to Election Day. One proposal of hers, however, which I’m genuinely enthusiastic about, is the expansion of Medicare to cover long-term care at home. If I understand her position correctly, this could have a transformative impact on my family.

My oldest child is autistic and nonverbal. In all likelihood, she will require around-the-clock care for the rest of her life. Perhaps my biggest fear, as a parent, is what will happen to her when my wife and I grow too old to care for her and ultimately die. The idea of my daughter being warehoused in some dismal institution is terrifying. Harris’ plan would allow seniors and people with disabilities to live at home.

“There are so many people in our country who are right in the middle ― they’re taking care of their kids and they’re taking care of their aging parents ― and it’s just almost impossible to do it all,” Harris said during a recent appearance on The View, a daytime talk show. “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.”

This is certainly true in our case. Caring for my daughter is effectively a full-time job, and it is that for me. Let me provide an example. Irregular sleep patterns are common for people with her diagnosis. My daughter is frequently up all night, which means I’m often up all night with her. For this reason and others, such as severe dysregulation, my daughter is chronically absent from school. Someone has to stay home with her.

“Home-based care is something almost everyone needs at some point, for themselves or a family member,” Larry Levitt, executive vice president at the nonpartisan health research organization KFF, said to HuffPost. “A universal home care benefit through Medicare would have a lot of political appeal. There is, of course, the age-old question in health care about how to pay for it, especially with an aging population.”

I’m more of a champagne socialist than I was while working as a grocery-store cashier and getting arrested at Occupy Wall Street, but, for me, the answer to this question and ones like it remain incredibly simple: tax the rich. For her part, Harris says she will fully finance the initiative by using the savings created by another one of her proposals, which would increase the government’s ability to negotiate drug prices.

I voted early for Vice President Kamala Harris and the rest of the Democratic ticket. In many ways, this was a vote against former President Donald Trump, and against fascism, rather than a vote for Democrats. I’m disgusted, among other things, with the center-left party’s lock-step support for Israel’s war on Gaza. However, there have been a few bright spots to Harris’ campaign, and her home-care proposal is one of them.