InProgress

from the Center for American Progress

Dear friend,

The skyrocketing cost of health care is pushing Americans to a financial breaking point.

CAP’s new plan presents progressive policies to lower health care costs and is already breaking through and drawing national attention.

In Axios, the proposal is framed as a major new push to deliver immediate relief, with the article highlighting that our plan “aims to lower health care costs, including premiums and deductibles, and ban insurers from requiring pre-treatment approvals.”

And in The Bulwark, the proposal is positioned as a shift toward taking on the real driver of Americans’ frustration with the system by “focus[ing] on the underlying forces driving up costs.”

That urgency couldn’t be clearer. 

The Center for American Progress proposal lays out a patients’ bill of rights that would protect Americans from rising health care costs by:

• Limiting excessive premium increases 
  
• Lowering deductibles by reducing outlier hospital prices 
  
• Preventing price gouging by health insurance companies 
  
• Banning and replacing prior authorization 
  

CAP’s plan provides lawmakers a way to deliver immediate protection and financial relief to patients until broader systemic reforms can be made. 

Sincerely,

Topher Spiro
Senior Fellow, Health Policy 
Center for American Progress

Breaking down our plan for a new patients’ bill of rights to lower your health care costs 

President Trump’s 2027 budget will cut programs Americans rely on

Last Friday, President Donald Trump submitted his annual budget request to Congress. The administration’s budget for fiscal year 2027 calls for historic cuts to domestic funding, and it seeks to shift that money toward historic increases in the military budget.

Across steep cuts to education, housing, health, and other priorities, the budget request slashes nondefense discretionary funding—the portion of the budget that funds most domestic activities aside from Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and SNAP—to its lowest levels as a percentage of GDP since at least the Eisenhower administration. At the same time, the spending plan calls for the largest annual increase in the military budget in more than 50 years. Within the context of the war in Iran, the budget should be seen as taking money away from Americans and sinking it toward war.

STATEMENT: Iran war has caused enormous human and financial toll for no apparent gain

President Donald Trump announced that the United States agreed to a two-week ceasefire with Iran and that this period would be used to negotiate a larger agreement to potentially end the war. In response, Damian Murphy, senior vice president for National Security and International Policy at the Center for American Progress, issued the following statement:

“This war has come at a terrible human cost for the people of Iran and an enormous financial cost for American taxpayers that could last for months. It began without clear objectives or coherent planning. Tens of billions of dollars later, and after needless loss of life, the American people are no safer—and certainly no more prosperous—than they were when this started.

“The president’s barbaric threat to destroy the civilization of Iran cannot be taken lightly, as it will have a lasting moral impact on the reputation of the United States and our ability to protect our people in the future. The Trump administration should fully commit to a peaceful negotiation process and bring this unnecessary conflict to a complete close in the coming days.”