Vot­ers say Con­gress needs to curb drug prices. So why do the odds look grim for ma­jor leg­is­la­tion this year?

House De­moc­rats are poised to pass sweep­ing leg­is­la­tion to low­er drug prices us­ing strate­gies Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has en­dorsed. A Trump aide urged the Re­pub­li­can-con­trolled Sen­ate to vote on a dif­fer­ent pack­age curb­ing drug prices that was draft­ed by a se­nior Re­pub­li­can.

But at least right now, nei­ther mea­sure ap­pears like­ly to at­tract enough bi­par­ti­san sup­port to be­come law.

Near­ly 8 in 10 Amer­i­cans say the cost of pre­scrip­tion drugs is un­rea­son­able, with vot­ers from both par­ties agree­ing that re­duc­ing the cost of pre­scrip­tion drugs should be one of Con­gress’ top pri­or­i­ties, ac­cord­ing to a poll last month by the Kaiser Fam­i­ly Foun­da­tion. (KHN is an ed­i­to­ri­al­ly in­de­pen­dent pro­gram of the foun­da­tion.)

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