Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, has selected Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota as her running mate. On healthcare, Walz’s policies align with Harris. From abortion rights to healthcare affordability to medical debt, he has sought to do at the state level what Harris aims to accomplish federally.
Walz is in his second term as governor of Minnesota. He was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Minnesota’s 1st congressional district, from 2007 to 2019.
In the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court in 2022, Governor Tim Walz signed a bill into law in 2023 that protects people seeking or providing abortions in Minnesota. On the issue of abortion rights, Vice President Harris has also been an outspoken advocate. She has called on Congress to restore the protections offered by Roe v. Wade.
Walz has frequently touted his state’s record on patient access to affordable healthcare. The Governor’s office announced last week that for the second consecutive year WalletHub ranked Minnesota number one in healthcare. To calculate rankings, WalletHub uses a composite measure of 44 indicators under the rubrics affordability, access and health outcomes.
The Governor highlighted in 2020 passage of a bill that made insulin more affordable for Minnesotans, by instituting a $35 per month limit on out-of-pocket costs for eligible individuals. Similarly, under the Biden-Harris Administration, the out-of-pocket cost of insulin was capped at $35 per month for Medicare recipients, as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, which passed in 2022. Harris intends to push to expand this provision to the commercial insurance sector if elected president.
Further, Walz has supported other IRA drug pricing provisions, including Medicare drug price negotiations. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services selected the first 10 top-selling prescription drugs for negotiations in August of last year. The agency will publicly post maximum fair prices for these medications by September 1, 2024. Fifteen more drugs will selected for negotiation in February 2025. Moreover, beginning next year Medicare beneficiaries will have a $2,000 annual cap on out-of-pocket costs for outpatient prescription drugs. Harris has expressed the desire to expand Medicare drug cost measures enacted through the IRA to the commercial sector where the majority of working Americans purchase their insurance. Though Walz hasn’t explicitly said he favors such an expansion, it would seem to be in line with his policies as governor.
To reduce disparities in access to health insurance coverage, Walz has worked toward facilitating the ease with which eligible state residents could purchase insurance. In January of this year, Walz’s office stated that a record number of Minnesotans, over 146,000, had signed up for private health insurance plans using MNsure, which is the state’s official health insurance marketplace.
And as a staunch supporter of the Affordable Care Act, Walz has defended ACA-driven policies such as Medicaid expansion and protections for people with pre-existing conditions enabling them to buy insurance at community rated- premiums (same price for all without medical underwriting) and no lifetime caps.
Walz has long favored allowing all residents to buy into the state-run MinnesotaCare health insurance program, though this “public option” proposal hasn’t yet been implemented. The concept of a public option preserves a role for private insurers, permitting the choice of plans offered by private insurers or a government-run or regulated health benefit plan. As presidential candidate in 2019 and 2020, Harris backed a public option as part of her healthcare reform proposal.
Walz has signed into law other measures that are consistent with Harris’s policy objectives, including legislation that eases the burden of medical debt for Minnesotans. Specifically, it bans medical providers from withholding medically necessary care due to unpaid debt and it prevents medical debt from impacting credit scores.
Harris supports efforts to use funds from the American Rescue Plan to purchase medical debt from healthcare providers—an initiative that could lead to three million Americans having a total of $7 billion forgiven by 2026. Harris also seeks to prohibit medical bills from being included on individuals’ credit reports. Medical debt relief has come up during campaign rallies and may be featured more prominently as a “bread-and-butter” policy matter in the weeks and months ahead, Associated Press reports.
In addition, Walz has pursued improvements to transparency in prescription drug costs. This June the Governor’s office published an initial list of 364 drugs from 76 pharmaceutical manufacturers that will now be subject to detailed reporting, not only from drug makers but also pharmacy benefit managers, wholesalers and pharmacies. The state government deems that the information collected will shed light on how prices increase through markups as they move through the supply chain.
On gun control, which can be viewed as a public health issue, Harris and Walz differed considerably at one time. In the mid 2010s, Walz was given an A+ rating by the National Rifle Association. But in recent years, he has shifted his stance, which now includes support for an assault weapons ban, according to the Christian Science Monitor. Such a ban is a plank in Harris’s campaign.
In sum, across a broad spectrum of healthcare policies Harris and Walz appear to largely agree. Given the popularity among many constituents of the measures they advocate, these are likely to feature prominently at campaign rallies.
