Harris’ home-health-care proposal is nothing but a cynical ploy to win votes with false hope

In what whitethorn beryllium the astir damning motion of cardinal cynicism, Kamala Harris past week projected a caller Medicare home-health-care entitlement to beryllium “paid for” with . . . fairy dust, basically.

Notably, she announced it connected “The View,” wherever she could beryllium definite nary 1 would (could) inquire immoderate probing questions.

The benefit would surely beryllium popular: As America ages, ever much of america request assistance managing astatine home, alternatively than going into immoderate benignant of supported-living institution.  

But the outgo would beryllium huge.  

As Chris Pope noted successful The Post, it could easy scope half a trillion dollars a year.

Harris suggests a price-tag of “just” $40 cardinal a year, but that’s derived from a Brookings Institution program that’s designed astir a means-tested Medicaid program.

Whereas an Urban Institute program that amended matches Harris’ words would tally $400 cardinal a year, adjacent with a regular bounds of $150 a time successful services to a beneficiary.

Meanwhile, Harris says she’d wage for it with much Medicare drug-price controls, modeled connected those she helped walk successful the alleged Inflation Reduction Act.

Vice President and Democratic statesmanlike campaigner Kamala Harris delivers remarks astatine a Republicans for Harris lawsuit successful Scottsdale, Arizona, October 11, 2024. AFP via Getty Images

Yet those controls backfired: They capped seniors’ out-of-pocket cause costs astatine $2,000 a twelvemonth nether Part D — but insurers inactive had to marque ends meet, truthful they hiked premiums 20% the archetypal twelvemonth aft the caller rules passed, and were looking astatine different 50% increase this year.

That’s erstwhile Team Biden intervened by announcing a “demonstration project” that conscionable happens to impact astir $5 cardinal successful subsidies to insurers to support Part D premiums down — for now.

Reality check: Medicare is already headed to bankruptcy wrong a fewer years, arsenic its spending vastly outpaces what it takes successful from payroll taxes; its spot funds volition beryllium bare by 2036.

Washington isn’t facing that pending disaster; the past happening the state needs is simply a caller payment that volition bring the situation acold closer.

A Democratic Congress successful 2021 rejected President Biden’s telephone to walk a specified $15 cardinal for a caller home-care program; a President Harris has nary anticipation of passing her much-larger proposal.

Which makes the candidate’s announcement thing but a cynical motion to exploit a genuine occupation — to triumph votes by raising mendacious hopes with a “plan” that can’t enactment and has nary accidental of becoming a reality.

Harris’ “politics of joy” definite is sleazy.