Kamala Harris is key to left leaning healthcare policies

Medicare for all: Harris signed onto Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All bill — which would eliminate private insurance and transfer everyone to a single-payer, government-run program — and introduced her own competing plan that would allow private plans to compete with public ones. She also cosponsored an array of more modest alternatives, including making it possible for more people to opt in to either Medicare or Medicaid. Harris’ all-of-the-above approach drew criticism from her primary rivals, including Sanders and Biden, with some accusing her of going too far, others not far enough and still others as inconsistent and untrustworthy. Biden’s campaign, which was then pushing a plan to expand Obamacare to include a public option, said Harris’ “have-it-every-which-way approach” showed “a refusal to be straight with the American middle class.” Cost of care: In her seven years as California attorney general, Harris repeatedly used legal tools to try to bring down the cost of health care, tackling anticompetitive behavior in the hospital, insurance and pharmaceutical industries. She also won multimillion-dollar settlements from major health care corporations like Quest Diagnostics and McKesson after whistleblowers filed lawsuits claiming fraud in the state’s Medicaid program. This record signals an interest not only in defending and building on the drug price negotiation framework enacted by Biden but also in using antitrust laws more aggressively to tackle consolidation in the health care sector. Lindsay Bealor Greenleaf, vice president and head of state and federal policy at consulting firm ADVI Health, whose clients include biopharmacy groups, told Pulse she will watch how Harris talks about the Inflation Reduction Act, which the vice president is likely to herald as an achievement of the Biden-Harris administration. “She has had very strong views on drug pricing. She pushed on march-in rights,” Greenleaf said, referring to an administration action to seize the patent of certain high-priced medicines.