While issues such as the border crisis, global conflicts, and persistent inflation continue to dominate headlines, healthcare remains a key concern for voters.
That’s especially important because, last month, Vice President Kamala Harris picked Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) as her running mate, solidifying the duo as the first ticket ever to feature two candidates who have fully embraced government-run, single-payer healthcare .
Harris and the Left’s healthcare policies are already making matters worse — not better.
Harris’s plan to build on the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare,” and, if her 2019 pledge is to be taken seriously, move toward universal government-run healthcare coverage would have serious consequences. It would cost tens of trillions of taxpayer dollars and reduce medical productivity, giving patients fewer healthcare choices, worse quality care, and longer wait times while hiking taxes for everyone.
Harris and Walz have also embraced the Biden administration’s disastrous prescription drug price controls. In North Carolina, these liberal policies are actually making prescription drug costs more expensive while limiting future access to life-saving drugs for seniors.
New research from the Heritage Foundation found that, since 2021, the number of Medicare prescription drug plans available for seniors in the Tar Heel State has dropped from 31 to only 20. And premiums for those plans have risen from $41.30 in 2021 to $63.33 in 2024. With most seniors living on a fixed income, these price hikes, in addition to inflation caused by Biden-Harris policies, are detrimental. If this trend continues, seniors will be forced to choose between paying for their healthcare or other basic necessities.
Democrats once promised people that the ACA would solve our healthcare woes. But a decade later, their efforts are more focused on masking its failures than fixing what is wrong. Premiums are still rising, families have fewer choices, and the choices that are available are more limited and lower quality.
From 2013 to 2022, for example, premiums for North Carolinians jumped from $240 per month to $615 per month. Between 2013 and 2024, the number of plans offering coverage in the individual market and now through the ACA exchanges dropped from 12 to eight. Plus, the plans offering coverage in the exchanges became more restrictive.
Instead of addressing these shortcomings , the Biden-Harris administration’s solution has been to simply slap a Band-Aid over them with more taxpayer-funded subsidies.
Of course, Obamacare was never seen as the solution for progressives such as Harris and Walz. Both have called for eliminating private, employer-based health insurance in favor of a single-payer, government-run healthcare system . Despite its name, “Medicare for All,” a single-payer healthcare program would, in fact, eliminate Medicare as we know it.
A Harris-Walz administration would take away the coverage you have today and put the government in charge of your care, giving it the power to decide what kind of care you get, where you get it, when you get it, and if you can get it at all.
The good news is that conservatives offer a better path that puts patients and families first.
While Harris and Walz are focused on expanding government control and eroding your freedom, conservatives in the House of Representatives are focused on making coverage more affordable , prices fully transpare nt , care more accessible , and overall costs more reasonable.
First, conservatives want to protect and preserve seniors’ choices in Medicare. Nearly half of seniors are choosing Medicare Advantage plans as their Medicare option. We should build on private-sector solutions by making needed reforms to sustain the program into the future.
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Second, let’s give patients more options and foster competition to lower costs. The Trump administration made great strides to bring down prices and make new and more affordable coverage options available. Rather than further restricting access, conservatives are focused on making affordable coverage options more available with greater flexibility to meet the needs of individuals and families.
There’s more to be done. It’s time to move away from the Democrats’ failed big-government policies and toward a healthcare agenda that is patient-centered, not government-centered. People deserve a system that is accountable to the patient and delivers real results.
Richard Hudson is a U.S. representative for North Carolina. Nina Owcharenko Schaefer is the director of the Center for Health and Welfare Policy at the Heritage Foundation. Heritage is listed for identification purposes only. The views expressed in this article are the authors' own and do not reflect any institutional position for Heritage or its Board of Trustees.
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