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What Would A President Kamala Harris Retirement Policy Look Like? Expansive Spending, To Start

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«Medicare for All» without copays, Social Security boosts, checks from the government — and the taxes, borrowing, and money-printing that goes along with it — might be in store for us.
Yesterday, the Joe Biden campaign announced that he had selected Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate, and, taking into account both his age/rumors of ill health and the fact that Harris was herself a presidential candidate, her opinions matter more than in the usual case in which a vice-presidential nominee is more window-dressing. (As to Biden’s life expectancy: assuming that he is in above-average health, he has a 10% chance of not surviving to the end of his term. As to dementia, even notwithstanding questions raised by his political opponents, the prevalence of dementia increases with age; there’s no convenient actuarial table but, across all OECD countries, the prevalence increases from 7% for individuals ages 75 — 79 to 12% for those 80 — 84, and 20% for those 85 — 89.) So what positions has Harris taken, as a senator and a candidate? (Note that her campaign website now redirects to the Biden campaign site, but her original site is available through the Internet Archive/Wayback Machine; in any event there’s not much content there so it’s necessary to look elsewhere.) Medicare Harris was one of the many Democratic candidates who pledged support for “Medicare for All.” Her particular version of the program would have covered “all medically necessary services” including vision, hearing, and dental, but, unlike Bernie Sanders’ plan, she does not directly promise that out-of-pocket costs and policy premiums will be eliminated. However, she suggested that consumers might purchase “supplemental insurance covering services not included in Medicare, such as medical insurance for traveling abroad, or cosmetic surgery” — but given that the largest role that Medicare supplement policies play today is covering Medicare copays and deductibles, this implies that they will be eliminated. In fact, other reporting cited a plan to cap out-of-pocket costs at $200. (Also: no insurance company would cover cosmetic surgery, any more than they do now.) In any case, she separately suggests that private insurance would still exist in a form similar to existing Medicare Advantage plans, though without many details. Harris further intended to fund the plan in largely the same manner as Sanders: an “income-based premium paid by employers” (e.

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