VP Harris makes third Wisconsin visit, focuses on health care and reproductive rights

VP Kamala Harris speaks at a campaign event at the La Crosse Center Monday focused on reproductive rights. (Screenshot | Kamala Harris campaign YouTube channel)

Vice President Kamala Harris — making her third visit to Wisconsin this year — announced two federal rules meant to improve conditions for health care workers and quality of care for seniors and people with disabilities on Monday. After visits with health care workers she rallied with supporters of reproductive rights at a campaign event. 

Harris’ first stop in the battleground state was Hmoob Cultural & Community Agency in La Crosse to announce two new federal rules that aim to improve safety, provide support for care workers and family caregivers and to expand access to affordable, high-quality care. She participated in a round table discussion with Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Chiquita-Brooks Lasure and health care professionals. 

“[Today] is about the safety, the dignity, the guarantee of self-determination that comes with the work that home health care workers and care workers do,” Harris said. “Today is about recognizing the gift that home health care workers and care workers give to us as a society.”

The first rule would require nursing homes that receive federal funding through Medicare and Medicaid to have 3.48 hours per resident per day of total staffing. This would include a minimum defined number of 0.55 hours per resident per day for registered nurses and 2.45 per resident per day for nurse aides. According to the administration, the rule will mean that a facility with 100 residents would need at least two or three RNs and at least 10 or 11 nurse aides as well as two additional nurse staff per shift to meet the minimum staffing requirements. 

The rule will be introduced in phases to allow nursing homes time to hire necessary staff, according to the administration. Limited, temporary exemptions for the rule will be available for nursing homes in workforce shortage areas that show a good faith effort to hire.

The second rule would aim to increase compensation for home care workers by requiring at least 80% of Medicaid payments for home care services to go to the wages of those providing the care. 

Harris said the rules recognize that health care workers deserve more.  

“I say it is about time that we start to recognize your value and pay you accordingly,” Harris said. 

Campaign zeroes in on abortion

Later in the afternoon, Harris sought to rally people at a campaign event at the La Crosse Center around reproductive rights. 

“We love our country and we understand then what is at stake in terms of foundational, fundamental principles and ideals, including one of the most important that of freedom,” Harris said. “I believe freedom is fundamental to the promise of America. The promise of America is the promise of protecting and respecting individuals rights, and liberty and freedom to make certain decisions including those of heart and home.” 

Seeking to motivate supporters to go to the polls in November, the Biden-Harris campaign is working to push abortion to the forefront of the 2024 election cycle. Last week, two women affected by Texas and Louisiana abortion restrictions campaigned on behalf of President Joe Biden in Wisconsin. 

Wisconsin U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan said ahead of Harris’ remarks that “no one has done more to hurt women” than former President Donald Trump, and noted that following the overturn of Roe v. Wade, Wisconsin effectively reverted to a 1849 law that eliminated abortion services until recently, when a judge ruled that the law it didn’t apply to abortion. 

Charlotte Urban, a UW-Madison medical student and La Crosse resident, said at the event before introducing Harris that “thankfully” Planned Parenthood is providing abortion services in the state again. However, she said that training to practice medicine in rural Wisconsin has shown her how important it is to elect a “president and vice president who will protect our reproductive freedoms.”

“It’s not much comfort when politicians at the state level keep attacking reproductive health care, and when, if Donald Trump were ever reelected, he’d sign a national abortion ban,” Urban said. “It makes me wonder: Am I going to be able to work in Wisconsin when I graduate?” 

During her remarks, Harris said she started her career as a prosecutor because she wanted to protect women and children and from violence. She called laws that prohibit people, especially survivors of a crime, from making decisions about their bodies “immoral,” and acknowledged the restrictions that came from Wisconsin’s 1849 law as well as a recently resurrected 1846 law in Arizona that bans nearly all abortion.

Trump has appeared recently to suggest he doesn’t favor a national abortion ban, but Democrats and reproductive rights advocates have argued his statements on the subject were meaningless.  

Harris blamed Trump for the harm she said has resulted from the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. 

“Let’s not forget that interview where [Trump] said women should be punished. Let’s not overlook that he has said he is proud of what he did — proud that health care providers could go to jail no exception, proud that our daughter, Doug [Emhoff] and my daughter, will have fewer rights than her grandmother,” Harris said.

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