Harris has a policy!

Why doesn't Kamala Harris spell out her policies? The legacy mass media keep loudly demanding this.

I'm talking to voters on the phones, at least the ones who don't hang up on me. The Harris voters who I'm helping to navigate Pennsylvania's mail-in ballot maze have two concerns that don't seem to arise from lack of policy plans: they want to be done with Trump and/or to ensure that women can make their own decisions about our bodies.

So you can count me among the surprised when I learned that Kamala Harris was articulating a serious effort to make possible in-home care for elders. That really is a novelty. 

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris ... proposed a major new initiative: expanding Medicare to cover the cost of long-term care at home.

Such a plan could mean the option of staying at home, rather than in a nursing facility, for the millions of seniors and people with disabilities who need help with the daily tasks of life.

It could also mean physical and financial relief ― and new opportunities for school or work outside the home ― for the millions of working-age Americans who today provide so much of that care on their own without much in the way of outside assistance.

If the proposed legislation is enacted, such a program would represent a substantial boost in federal support for caregiving and, by any measure, one of the largest one-time increases in American history. HuffPost

This could be huge for most all of us. Most old people want to stay in their homes as they age, but the way assistance has been structured has made this incredibly difficult. At present, eligibility for government assistance for home care usually requires spending down all you have to become dependent on Medicaid. Naturally most people don't want to do this. Many feel that they would be robbing their children, besides naturally wanting to stay in home surroundings.

I watched this in my own family. My mother-in-law didn't have much savings to retire on. Rent took up more and more of her budget. As her chronic illnesses worsened, she needed help -- not medical help, but help with the tasks of daily living, food shopping, some cooking. But she certainly didn't need to be in a nursing home. Yet Medicare did nothing for her. Ever ingenious, she realized that if she went into hospice care, she could get some home assistance ... so she schemed to qualify. She then survived longer in hospice care than anyone her workers had ever seen, being a tough and artful old bird. It took a special sort of person to pull this off; she should not have had to find a way to game the system.

What Harris is proposing could be life changing for elders and families. I have to ask, why aren't we hearing more about this policy proposal?

In answer, I suspect is that in-home elder care is a burden that falls more on women than on men. Women live longer and find themselves in this fix more often; daughters live with the expectation they'll take up the task of caring for family members. This is coded (and actually is) a women's issue -- perhaps we only get one per election and this year it is bodily autonomy? That's good, but we need more.

Can this get passed into law? Certainly only if enough Democratic Senators and Congressmen win to ensure majorities. And it may take a few legislative rounds for such a major expansion of the government's duty of care to become law. But this is a worthy goal.

Here's Harris making the pitch for her plan. I like the bit about how she cooked for her dying mother, searching for foods the older woman would find appetizing. That's the real stuff!