Kamala Harris’s healthcare record is rotten to the core

Democrats, including former President Barack Obama , have enthusiastically rallied around Vice President Kamala Harris as their presumptive presidential nominee. Voters will not be nearly as enthusiastic about her record on healthcare .

Harris stands to President Joe Biden's left on health policy. If elected, she would almost certainly drag the United States closer to a complete government takeover of health insurance, known as "single-payer."

Step one might well be extending publicly funded insurance coverage to illegal immigrants. The Biden administration has already finalized a rule that would allow people who arrived in the country illegally as children to claim subsidies through Obamacare's exchanges, which is plainly forbidden by Obamacare.

During her unsuccessful campaign for president in 2019, Harris agreed the U.S. should give insurance to illegal immigrants.

Earlier that year, Harris co-sponsored Sen. Bernie Sanders's (I-VT) signature Medicare for All bill, which would have outlawed private insurance and forced everyone into new, government-run health plans.

Harris then created her own version of "Medicare for all" as part of her 2019 presidential campaign. Phased in over 10 years, "KamalaCare" would cover "all medically necessary services, including emergency room visits, doctor visits, vision, dental, hearing aids, mental health, and substance use disorder treatment, and comprehensive reproductive health services."

Private insurance would not be banned, but it would have to "adhere to strict Medicare requirements on costs and benefits."

"Medicare for all" would be incredibly expensive. According to 2022 testimony from Charles Blahous, a scholar at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, the program would cost between $32.6 trillion and $38.8 trillion between 2022 and 2031.

KamalaCare proposed funding "Medicare for all" by making income, payroll, and estate taxes "more progressive," taxing capital gains as income, taxing Wall Street trades and derivative transactions, and raising taxes for offshore corporate income.

But "taxing the rich" won't spare the little guy. Consumers would feel the impact in higher prices.

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Besides, government-dominated healthcare systems in other countries deliver shoddy care. Take England, where 7.6 million people are on waiting lists for care from the National Health Service. In Canada, patients wait 27 weeks to receive specialty treatment after seeing a primary care doctor.

Clearly, Harris's healthcare record is rotten to the core.

Sally C. Pipes is president, CEO, and a Thomas W. Smith fellow in healthcare policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is False Premise, False Promise: The Disastrous Reality of Medicare for All (Encounter 2020). Follow her on Twitter @sallypipes .