This week, Kamala Harris announced an historic plan to support the "Sandwich Generation" – families caught in the middle between raising small children and caring for their aging parents.

This historic Medicare at Home proposal will cover long-term home care and add hearing and vision benefits for the first time ever.

Working families, especially in the rural U.S., are stuck between a rock and a hard place trying to find affordable, accessible daycare or preschool for their young children, navigating the challenges and absurd costs of their parents getting older, and still go to work from 9-5 everyday.

Something has to give.

With Medicare at Home, older Americans can stay in their homes longer, maintain their independence and dignity, and get extra help with daily activities from a qualified home health aide.

On top of that, some 90% of Medicare users need eyeglasses and almost 50% have a hearing impairment, but until now, Medicare wouldn't cover vision or hearing.

It doesn't make sense, it eats into the fixed incomes of seniors, and now, it's getting fixed.

Another planned reform is ending the practice of seizing the homes of elderly recipients upon their deaths as a way to recoup the costs spent on services for them. This painful rule keeps rural, poor, or minority families in particular from passing down their family home, a lifeline and important asset to build wealth. That practice will end with the Harris-Walz administration.

To provide even more relief to seniors and to help pay for these new benefits, Kamala Harris will continue to negotiate drug costs with pharmaceutical companies who've hiked up prices to astonishing levels over the years. In addition, she will close loopholes, tighten transparency, and crack down on pharmaceutical companies and pharmacy benefit managers trying to take advantage of seniors at every turn.

This historic proposal is one part of a new plan focused on making life better for families and workers – from a nationwide plan for paid family and medical leave for all, to permanently reinstating the Child Tax Credit, to new help for first-time homebuyers.

The benefits for rural families cannot be overstated. Costs, concerns, and complications will go down while freedom, security, and productivity go up.

Tessa

Tessa Gould
Executive Director, One Country