If Kamala Harris is elected, can you keep your health insurance?

On Monday, the medical news site MedPage published a special report entitled “What do we know about Kamala Harris’ medical history? Almost nothing.”
The same could be said about what we know about what Harris would do as president regarding health care.
This point was underscored Sunday in a testy exchange between Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and Jonathan Karl, chief Washington correspondent for ABC News.
When Cotton said that Harris wants to expand Medicare to include all Americans — ending private insurance as we know it — Karl pushed back and said that Harris no longer supports that, Cotton rejoined that we don’t know that to be true.
Harris has declined to give interviews or hold press conferences, and what little we know about how she might govern can only be gleaned from her Democratic convention acceptance speech, comments by aides, and statements she has made in years past, including her posts on the platform Medium, where in 2019 she offered “My Plan for Medicare for All.”
Politics being the art of the possible, it’s not surprising that Harris would walk back — or run from — some of her more progressive policies in the past in her quest for the White House.
Of those she’d like to retain, it makes sense she might want to stay quiet about them (or, as Cotton said, “hide them”) until after the election. For all of the complaining about the vice president’s strategy of not speaking to the media, it’s working beautifully. No one can fact-check things she doesn’t say.
And as one astute reader wrote to me last week, “This election is not about precision, policy or programs. It is a change movement election, making most things the media and commentators will focus on no more than sideshows from the unstoppable political freight train roaring down the tracks.”
In other words, many voters who are caught up in the Harris “moment” neither want nor seem to need the specifics of how she will govern; it is enough that she promises joy, vigor and change. And so those Americans who do want specifics — whether to use Harris’ most radical positions against her or to reassure apprehensive Republicans that a Harris vote wouldn’t be the same as voting for Bernie Sanders — are left frustrated.
That frustration was on full display in Sunday’s exchange between Cotton and Karl. With no clear policy paper or recent sound bite that could be used to prove their position, the men were reduced to arguing like a pair of irascible toddlers.
The exchange, per Fox News:
Karl: “She said she has changed.”
Cotton: “No, she hasn’t.”
Karl: “Yes, she has.”
Cotton: “No, no, she has not.”
The author Jon Katz, who started his career as a newspaper reporter, has characterized Harris’ strategy this way: “She is intelligent, articulate, photogenic, and charismatic enough to keep herself together for another few months until she wins the presidency. She seems safe and reasonable and projects warmth and charm, which Trump left behind many years ago.”
Katz went on to say, “It is brilliant of her to avoid interviews and antiquated communication methods that only open her up to attack and injury. … Playing gotcha with reporters is a silly and foolish risk, especially when an army of enemies is eager for something to nail her on.”
It’s difficult to see talking to reporters as a serious risk, given the warm treatment Harris has enjoyed since becoming the nominee. And it’s even more difficult to see who would take the media’s place in terms of asking politicians hard questions. Influencers? Probably not. Yet the Harris campaign gave press credentials to more than 200 of them at the Democratic National Convention, giving TikTokers and YouTubers not just the access accorded to journalists but full-on “VIP treatment,” per Wired magazine.
Meanwhile, Trump, after watching the Karl/Cotton exchange, pondered on social media whether he should proceed with the ABC debate, saying he wouldn’t get a fair shake at the network. The Harris campaign has asked for changes to the debate rules that had been agreed when President Joe Biden was still in the race, leading some observers to question whether the debate, planned for Sept. 10 in Philadelphia, will go on.
If it is canceled, Harris can continue to evade questions about how she would approach healthcare policy as president, revealing it to us as a January surprise. But in lieu of a debate or press conference or information on her campaign website, we at least can read the plan she detailed on Medium in 2019.
Here’s what Harris wrote about her health-insurance plan then: “At the end of the ten-year transition, every American will be a part of this new Medicare system. They will get insurance either through the new public Medicare plan or a Medicare plan offered by a private insurer within that system.”
And here’s what she said about health care in her DNC acceptance speech: “And as president, I will bring together labor and workers and small-business owners and entrepreneurs and American companies to create jobs, to grow our economy, and to lower the cost of everyday needs like health care and housing and groceries.”
In other words, to paraphrase MedPage Today: What do we know about Kamala Harris’ plans for our health care system? Almost nothing. And that should bother every American, no matter how jubilant they are at the prospect of change.