Kamala Harris Vows to ‘Eliminate’ Private Insurance Market
Senator Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) advocated the elimination of the private health insurance industry during a CNN town hall event in Iowa Monday night.
Harris, who announced her 2020 presidential candidacy this week, broke from previous Democratic healthcare orthodoxy, which held that Americans could retain their private insurance if they so chose, in favor of a single-payer plan in which the government is the sole health insurance provider.
“I believe the solution — and I actually feel very strongly about this — is that we need to have Medicare for all,” Harris said in response to an audience question about healthcare affordability. “That’s just the bottom line.”
“So for people out there who like their insurance, they don’t get to keep it?” CNN’s Jake Tapper asked.
“Let’s eliminate all of that,” Harris responded, “let’s move on.”
Harris went on to describe the current healthcare system as “inhumane” and argued that switching over to a single payer system would reduce the financial and bureaucratic barriers to quality health care.
“Well, listen, the idea is that everyone gets access to medical care, and you don’t have to go through the process of going through an insurance company, having them give you approval, going through the paperwork, all of the delay that may require,” she said. “Who of us has not had that situation where you’ve got to wait for approval, and the doctor says, well, I don’t know if your insurance company is going to cover this. Let’s eliminate all of that. Let’s move on.”
Employing the language of human rights, the Democratic establishment has increasingly embraced “Medicare For All” in recent years as young, healthy Americans — previously burdened by the threat of a punitive tax on the uninsured, which the Trump administration recently eliminated — have increasingly fled government exchanges, exposing older, sick consumers to even steeper premiums.
The policy, which is widely-viewed as a litmus test among potential Democratic presidential candidates, mandates that every American to purchase their health insurance through the government. It would require $32.6 trillion in new spending over ten years, according to the Mercatus Center. Doubling the corporate and individual income tax would not cover the cost of the program, according to the analysis.
