The Washington Post’s Yasmeen Abutaleb and Josh Dawsey report:
“White House advisers, scrambling to create a health-care agenda for President Trump to promote on the campaign trail, are meeting at least daily with the aim of rolling out a measure every two to three weeks until the 2020 election.”
The administration has already announced an initiative to allow prescription drugs to be imported from Canada and elsewhere. It is also reportedly considering a sweeping executive order to lower Medicare Part D drug prices by tying them to prices in other countries.
“The furious push reflects the administration’s sense of vulnerability on an issue that Democrats successfully used in 2018 to win control of the House of Representatives,” Abutaleb and Dawsey write. But it’s not clear whether the administration can push through ideas that will have an effect before the 2020 elections — and if it can enact some of its ideas without Congress, where some Republicans remain skeptical about the White House’s approach.
“While Republicans have largely fallen in line with Trump on free trade and immigration even when he has blown up GOP orthodoxy, many rely heavily on donations from the pharmaceutical industry and are reluctant to sour those relationships,” the Post notes.
