Democrats’ drug pricing policies build on Trump’s foundation

The most striking feature of a drug pricing blueprint Senate Democrats released for comment Tuesday is how much of it builds on ideas President Donald Trump already says he supports. The proposals are framed to emphasize differences from Republicans, but in key areas — international reference pricing, restrictions on launch prices, and extending pricing controls beyond Medicare into commercial markets — the two sides are closer on substance than their rhetoric suggests.

The open question is whether the parties will try to hammer out compromises from that common ground to produce legislation that could be enacted in the next Congress, or accentuate their differences to score political points...