Vice President Kamala Harris announced a plan earlier this month to add home healthcare benefits to Medicare. The plan is a fiscal fantasy. Medicare is already in a fiscal crisis, and new benefits will only make things worse.

According to the Brookings Institution, covering seniors’ home care for even one year would cost Medicare $40 billion. The program already accounts for more than one in every five dollars spent on healthcare in this country. Medicare spending exceeded $944 billion in 2022, the most recent year for which there are federal data. Its Part A hospital insurance trust fund is slated to run out of money as early as 2036.