Where Kamala Harris stands on health care issues
Vice President Kamala Harris, who said she will seek the Democratic nomination after President Biden decided not to continue his reelection campaign, has previously staked out health positions to the left of President Biden.
But there isn’t expected to be much daylight between her policy priorities and President Biden’s.
Harris will be able to claim ownership of Biden’s health wins—like a $35 insulin cap, Medicare drug price negotiations and an out-of-pocket cap on Medicare drug coverage—while also being a much stronger messenger than Biden has been.
“It is the Biden-Harris administration. And they have worked together on those issues the whole time he’s been president,” said Debbie Curtis, a vice president at McDermott+ consulting. “One hundred percent no air there.”
Here’s where Harris stands on major health issues:
Abortion
Abortion is one of Democrats’ strongest issues, but Biden has not been the most consistent messenger, given his complicated views on the issue.
By contrast, Harris has cemented herself as the Democrats’ foremost advocate on abortion rights, forcefully championing it. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Harris crisscrossed the country, visiting red, blue and swing states to meet with activists, providers and women impacted by abortion bans.
She was the first vice president to visit an abortion provider, and abortion rights groups lined up to endorse her after Biden announced he was no longer running.
“In a moment when Republicans have launched a full-scale attack on our reproductive rights, an issue that will be the driving force for Democratic wins, Vice President Harris is our most powerful advocate and messenger on this issue,” EMILYs List President Jessica Mackler said in a statement.
When she was running for president in 2019, Harris vowed to put more federal guardrails around abortion access by requiring states with a history of restricting it to seek clearance from the Justice Department before enacting any new abortion laws.
She was endorsed by pro-abortion groups when she ran for California attorney general in 2010 and has maintained strong ties with those organizations in the years since.
ObamaCare
While running against Biden in the 2019 Democratic primary, Harris tried to present herself as someone between moderates like Biden and progressives like Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
She endorsed the Medicare for All bill introduced by Sanders, but also backed an array of moderate alternatives, including a “private option” plan that would transition to Medicare for All by allowing private insurance plans to compete with public plans.
That seeming indecision to pick a lane led to criticisms from other candidates and helped to doom her candidacy.
Still, experts agree she is a staunch supporter of expanding ObamaCare and making health care more affordable for millions of Americans — something that is likely to be one of the biggest health care fights in Congress in 2025.
“Harris’ previous support for Medicare for All with a private insurance option is suggestive of her values, but I doubt it will be a big emphasis for her in the current campaign,” Larry Levitt, executive vice president for health policy at KFF, a health research nonprofit, said in an email.
“I think Harris will lean much more into the Biden-Harris record on health care than policies she proposed in the 2019 primary. The political and policy context have changed quite a bit since 2019,” Levitt said.
Drug pricing
As a presidential candidate, Harris wanted to go further than Biden on drug pricing by capping U.S. prices to the lowest ones negotiated by other countries, like Japan and the United Kingdom.
Democrats in 2019 were mostly aligned on bringing down drug prices with then-President Trump, who wanted to ensure Americans didn’t pay more for the same drugs than people in other countries.
Harris also endorsed “march-in” rights, which would allow the government to seize patents of high-priced drugs developed using federal research to make them more affordable and increase competition.
Progressives have long insisted the U.S. has the authority to take such action, but the Biden administration has been reluctant to do so.
Health costs
As the attorney general of California, Harris focused on health care consolidation and clashed with major insurers, hospitals, and drug companies. Her record indicates she isn’t afraid to aggressively use antitrust laws to keep companies from raising costs due to anti-competitive behavior.
Under Harris’ leadership, California joined the U.S. Department of Justice in filing a civil antitrust lawsuit to block the proposed $54 billion merger of insurers Anthem and Cigna to create the nation’s largest health insurance company.
She also won multimillion-dollar settlements from major health care corporations like Quest Diagnostics and McKesson, which were the subjects of whistle-blower lawsuits accusing them of Medicaid fraud.
As vice president, Harris has taken the lead on the administration’s medical debt initiatives. Earlier this year, she announced a new set of rules that bans medical debt from credit reports.
“No one should be denied access to economic opportunity simply because they experienced a medical emergency,” Harris said at the time.
Other federal efforts to curb medical debt include the No Surprises Act, which took effect in July 2022 and prohibits surprise billing for most emergency services and non-emergency services done out-of-network.
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