July 21, 2026 | Victoria Guida and David Lim
Politico Morning Money: An out-of-pocket prescription
An exclusive for Politico’s Morning Money featured the Kitchen Table Project’s debut proposal focused on healthcare affordability.
They note:
A team of economists with ties to the Democratic Party has crafted a health care proposaldesigned to reduce Americans’ medical bills — but in a way that they argue is both concrete and marketable to the public.The central idea: capping the amount of money people pay out of pocket in any given month.
It’s the first of what will be multiple proposals from the Kitchen Table Project, a new “policy popup” aimed at tackling affordability concerns that’s led by Lael Brainard, a former top official at the Federal Reserve and adviser to President Joe Biden. Another prominent participant in the project, before he took on a new role in California: former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra.
The group says its ideas came from talking to voters and then were distilled and polled. While the project itself is nonpartisan, it could provide fodder for politicians on the left hoping to convince voters that they have a digestible plan to bring the cost of living down, a strategy that proved effective for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
The latest report includes new national polling by The Kitchen Table Project and Global Strategy Group which finds that Americans overwhelmingly support a proposal to cap monthly out-of-pocket healthcare costs, providing families with greater financial security and predictability when they need medical care.