American Cures Act

Key Points

• The bill authorizes and directly appropriates funding for biomedical research across four major agencies: NIH, CDC, the Department of Defense health program, and the VA medical research program. These are mandatory appropriations, meaning the money flows automatically without needing annual spending bills.
• NIH would receive the largest share, starting at roughly $52.5 billion in fiscal year 2027 and growing each year to over $102 billion by 2036. This roughly doubles the agency's current budget over the decade, with annual increases of about 7-8%.
• The CDC, DoD health research, and VA medical and prosthetics research also receive decade-long funding schedules with similar annual growth rates. After 2036, all four funding streams automatically increase each year based on inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index.
• The bill shields all of its funding from sequestration, the automatic across-the-board budget cuts that can kick in under federal budget rules. It also exempts the spending from PAYGO scorecards, meaning the costs would not trigger mandatory offsets elsewhere in the budget.
• Over the full decade from 2027 to 2036, the bill would provide a combined total of roughly $750 billion across all four agencies, representing a massive, sustained increase in federal biomedical research investment with no specified funding offsets.