Kamala Harris builds on and differs from Biden’s healthcare policies

If presumptive Democratic nominee Kamala Harris is elected president, he wants to expand the administration’s efforts to reduce health care costs. But Harris is also likely to differentiate himself from President Biden in a number of areas, including more vocal support for abortion rights and a possible broadening of the scope of the federal government’s role in health care.

On the issue of abortion, Vice President Harris has been a much more vocal supporter than Biden. Harris has done that with power called Congress to restore the protections provided by Roe v. Wade regarding women’s reproductive rights. She has made women’s autonomy in deciding whether or not to terminate pregnancies a central part of her campaign.

Biden, on the other hand said At a 2023 fundraising event, he said he is “not big on abortion,” though he believed Roe v. Wade “got it right.”

During the campaign, Harris has spoken about the need to expand Medicare — the government’s health insurance program for seniors and the disabled — to include dental, vision and hearing benefits. She also touts the Biden administration’s record of reducing the number of uninsured to the lowest level in history and lowering Medicare beneficiaries’ out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs through provisions included in the Inflation Reduction Act. For example, the cost of insulin has fallen limited to $35 per month for Medicare recipients and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services direct price negotiations began about the 10 best-selling prescription drugs. Fifteen more drugs will be selected for negotiation in February 2025. In addition, starting next year, Medicare beneficiaries will face a $2,000 annual limit on out-of-pocket costs for outpatient prescription drugs.

Following Biden’s lead, Harris has expressed a desire to expand the Medicare drug cost measures introduced by the IRA to the commercial sector, where the majority of working Americans buy their insurance.

But as a newly elected senator in 2017, Harris stood to the left of Biden when it came to how to achieve universal access to health care. At the time, she called for a transition to a single-payer system, something Biden did not endorse.

Then, during the presidential campaign in 2019 and 2020, Harris her support declined for abolishing private health insurance and establishing a single-payer system. Instead, she revealed one care plan which would entail a gradual expansion of Medicare access to all Americans over a ten-year transition period. The plan would automatically enroll newborns and the uninsured. Employers could choose from federally designated programs. The proposal would give health care providers time to get used to and adapt to the new system. Harris’ concept retained a role for private insurers, giving Americans a choice of Medicare plans offered by private insurers or a so-called public option. A public option is a government-run or regulated health insurance plan that competes with private payers.

Since becoming vice president, Harris has focused on improving implementation of existing laws, such as the Affordable Care Act, to push for universal access rather than wholesale system change. Viewed in this light, it is likely that Harris would want to extend the agreement improved subsidies for people who purchase coverage through the Affordable Care Act exchanges. These subsidies can significantly reduce the cost of monthly premiums. Individuals or families are eligible if they would otherwise pay more than 8% of their annual income for ACA coverage. This subsidy provision expires at the end of 2025.

And in line with the current administration, Harris would like to work with Congress and state authorities to try to expand Medicaid coverage in the ten states that have not yet expanded it under the ACA.

It is speculative at this point whether Harris would favor a larger role for the federal government in reducing prescription drug prices beyond what the IRA entails.

As a presidential candidate in 2019, Harris supported a plan that would give the Department of Health and Human Services the authority to set price ceilings on drugs sold in the U.S., based on prices charged in other developed countries. In some ways, this international price reference arrangement is strikingly familiar with what former President Trump envisioned during his first term but failed to achieve. With the IRA going into effect and Medicare negotiating drug prices, Harris is unlikely to want to tie the price of certain drugs to international benchmarks.

However, there may be other ways Harris could address the prices of certain drugs. If BioPharma Dive Harris previously reported endorsed the possible use of “march-in-rights” to break the patents on “federally funded inventions” to help lower prices when manufacturers engage in price gouging. The Biden administration issued a 2023 framework for the march-in-rights that could be used in the future. But it has not yet been implemented and there are no signs that this government is about to do so. One of the operational issues concerns how to define and then determine what constitutes price gouging. Another is that only approximately 11% of all new drug approvals have patents that reveal government funding support.

A separate initiative that Vice President Harris has focused on during her time in office concerns medical bills and debt. This is evident from a study by the Commonwealth Fund. 79 million Americans have “medical bills or debt problems.” As for combat medical debtHarris supports efforts to use money from the American Rescue Plan to buy medical debt from health care providers — an initiative that could result in three million Americans having a total of $7 billion forgiven by 2026. Harris also tries to prohibit that medical bills are not included on individuals’ credit reports. Medical debt relief was discussed during campaign meetings and can be presented more prominently as a “bread-and-butter” policy issue in the coming weeks and months, Associated press reports.

Most of Harris’ public statements on health care policy suggest she will continue to follow the Biden administration’s path. Still, subtle differences in emphasis appear to be emerging as Harris’ presidential campaign gets into full swing.