Vice President Kamala Harris unveiled her economic agenda on Friday, with much of her plan including building on the health care gains made by the Biden administration.
Speaking in North Carolina, Harris vowed that her administration would continue negotiations on Medicare and expand it to cover all Americans, not just Medicare recipients.
“Yesterday, we announced we’ll cut prices on 10 more life-saving drugs by up to 80 percent, and I pledge to continue this progress,” Harris said at a campaign rally in Raleigh, North Carolina.
“With your help, we will lower the cost of insulin and prescription drugs for everyone, not just seniors, and demand transparency from the middlemen who use opaque practices between Big Pharma and insurance companies to drive up drug prices and profit from demand for our drugs,” she added.
President Biden has cited the Medicare negotiations and lowering insulin prices as his major achievements in the health care field.
She leaned on her role in the administration as well as her previous work as California’s attorney general.
“As California Attorney General, I pursued companies that illegally gouged prices, including wholesalers who inflated prescription drug prices,” Harris said.
The administration announced earlier this year that it was moving forward with a plan to remove medical debt from credit reports, and Harris was a key figure in the effort. The Democratic presidential nominee vowed Thursday to work to eliminate medical debt altogether.
“As president, I will work with states like North Carolina to forgive medical debt for millions more Americans. Thank you again, Governor Roy Cooper,” she said, referring to North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper’s (D) medical debt forgiveness. Medical Debt Relief Plan It was approved last month.
Cooper was one of the politicians considered to be Harris’ running mate before Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (Democrat) officially joined the list of candidates.
The vice president also distanced himself from former President Trump, reiterating his frequent warnings that he would seek to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) if re-elected.
“Donald Trump wants to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which 45 million Americans rely on for their health care,” she said. “That would take us back to the days when insurance companies could deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. We all remember what that was like, and we’re not going back.”
“Remember, he tried to cut Medicare every year of his presidency, threatening a system that tens of millions of seniors rely on,” Harris continued. “And according to his Project 2025 plan, he’s going to undermine our efforts to lower prescription drug and insulin costs. We’ve come too far to allow that to happen.”
Trump has said he has no plans to repeal the ACA, saying instead he will make it “much better than it is now,” and has pledged not to cut funding for Medicare or Social Security after coming under fire earlier this year for saying “there are a lot of things we could do” to cut them.
The former president on Thursday criticized Harris’ health care plan, saying she would create a “communist system.”
“You’re going to be thrown into a system where everyone has health care. You’re going to wait 10, 12, 11 months for a doctor,” Trump said during a speech at his New Jersey golf resort. “You look at some of these systems, you look at how they work in other countries. This is a disgrace. So private health care will go away. She wants to get rid of that.”
“She is a co-sponsor of a bill that would eliminate the highly popular private health insurance that 150 Americans rely on, force everyone onto an inferior socialist government-run health care system with rationing and deadly wait times, and dramatically raise taxes,” he added.
