How the death of Joe Biden’s son informed his views on health care
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Read more: The Bee’s interview with Joe Biden
In an interview with The Sacramento Bee’s California Nation podcast, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden discussed his approach to the Golden State, ideas to improve California’s housing crisis and wildfire issues, as well as who could be his running mate. Read more from the Jan. 10 interview here:
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How the death of Joe Biden’s son informed his views on health care
Beau Biden had no savings and faced a tough road ahead in his battle with brain cancer. He was struggling to recall proper nouns and feared he may have to resign as attorney general.
Worried about the potential costs, his father, former Vice President Joe Biden planned to come up with the money by selling his beloved Delaware home.
That’s when President Barack Obama vowed to intervene.
“He said, ‘No, no, Joe. I have the money. I’ll take care of it, and you can pay me back whenever,’” Biden recalled.
Biden detailed his experience in a wide-ranging interview for The Bee’s “California Nation” podcast, where he also discussed the political future of California Sen. Kamala Harris, his strategy to winning the state’s March 3 primary and his solutions to California’s rising problems of wildfires and housing affordability. Biden outlined his health care views ahead of a town hall event on Friday night in Sparks, Nevada.
While his son died and he didn’t end up needing the money, Biden says he came away from the experience with a renewed sense of purpose to preserve the Affordable Care Act and help comfort others who are struggling.
“You notice you guys aren’t writing about my hugging women anymore because you figured out they’re hugging me,” Biden said. “And the reason they’re hugging me is they walk up and grab me and say, ‘I just lost my daughter, cancer,’ or, ‘My son’s dying,’ or, ‘I have Stage 4.’ And what they’re really looking at, and I found out after I lost my wife and daughter when I was your age, is that they’re looking for reassurances. Can I make it? Will I make it? They just want assurance.”
Biden said insurance companies could have taken advantage of his family’s misfortune if the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare, weren’t signed into law.
“Had we not passed Obamacare, what would’ve been able to happen with the insurance companies is they could say Beau had a death sentence, it was just a matter of how long he’d live, not whether he’d live,” Biden said. “And so, they could have come in and said, ‘You’ve run out of coverage, suffer in peace the next five, seven, eight months that you lived.’ That’s what Obamacare did.”
Of the top Democrats running for president in 2020, Biden has put out the cheapest health care proposal, vowing to spend $750 billion over the next decade. He considers it “revolutionary,” disputed the notion it was “incremental” and questioned the likelihood of Congress passing the sweeping Medicare for All bill Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren are promoting on the campaign trail.
California Democrats want to hear candidates presidential candidates discuss their ideas about health care as the state’s primary approaches. It’s the top issue among likely voters, according to the most recent survey conducted by the Public Policy Institute of California.
“We can reduce the price of drugs, we can reduce the cost of gold plans, we can limit deductibles to $1,000, and we can do it right away,” Biden said of his plan. “We can get it done, and it covers everyone. And I promise you when it passes, it’s gonna be revolutionary. You’re gonna see what happens.”
“The idea you think we’re gonna pass a $30 trillion plan raising taxes on working class people and middle class people is just, at least Bernie’s being honest about it. He’s saying there’s gonna be middle class tax increases, there’s gonna be an overall tax increase. We can get the same thing done quickly, nothing incremental about it.”
Biden first told the story of Obama’s loan offer in a 2016 interview with CNN and reflected on it more in his 2017 book, “Promise Me, Dad.”
“The reason I wrote the book about Beau is to let people know how incredible he was but also to let people know the only way I’ve gone through these tough things is with purpose,” he said. “You have to have purpose.”
This story was originally published January 14, 2020 at 5:00 AM with the headline "How the death of Joe Biden’s son informed his views on health care."