WASHINGTON — The drug industry is bracing for a deluge of drug pricing proposals from the soon-to-be Democratic House of Representatives. But it’s not worried about the controversial policies that have been blaring in TV ads and featured in stump speeches in recent months.
Democrats campaigned on a slate of sweeping drug pricing proposals, like allowing Medicare to negotiate directly with drug companies and creating a Senate-confirmed price-gouging enforcer. But those ideas are likely dead on arrival in the Senate, which remains in Republican control.
Over the next two years Democrats instead will have to focus on making changes along the margins — perhaps taking on drug makers’ alleged gaming of Food and Drug Administration rules or making modest tweaks to Medicare and Medicaid. Drug industry lobbyists are already monitoring congressional interest in some of the less ambitious policies they believe could garner bipartisan support.
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