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The Democrats' most significant attempt to rein in health care costs in the private market— specifically prescription drug costs — is increasingly likely to fail. Why it matters: U.S. health care costs have ballooned over the last few decades. But there's fierce industry resistance to allowing the government to step in and regulate private market prices. Plenty of lawmakers hate the idea as well. (Owens, 10/15)

Congress’s ambitious plans to expand health coverage are crashing up against one of the great questions in health policy: Can they force the pharmaceutical industry to hold down prescription drug prices without sacrificing the medical innovation that could lead to new treatments and cures in the future? Democrats’ Build Back Better reconciliation bill sets a hard cap on the price Medicare would pay for some prescription drugs, ensuring that the program would pay no more than 20 percent more than other wealthy nations. Those prices would also be available to the commercial plans that cover most working Americans. (Scott, 10/13)

Suppose you didn’t have to spend more than $2,000 a year on your prescriptions? Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care advocacy group, estimated that in 2019, there were 154 drugs where Medicare Part D recipients incurred average annual out-of-pocket costs of more than $2,000 for a single drug. In 108 cases, the average cost was more than $3,100.About 1.2 million Americans would save money if the new limit was $2,000, which House Democrats have pushed. If it was $3,100, as has been discussed by Senate lawmakers, about 300,000 would benefit. (Lightman, 10/14)

Phoenix is no Kendall Square. Its biotech companies, ventures like OncoMyx Therapeutics and VisionGate, haven’t generated one-tenth the buzz of companies like Moderna or CRISPR Therapeutics. But if congressional Democrats’ drug pricing reforms fail, the tiny biotechs that pepper the Grand Canyon State deserve an outsized bit of the credit. (Florko, 10/19)

Maine and Missouri might not stand out as top retirement destinations, but new data suggests that older Americans should consider the pair since they provide the lowest costs of prescription drugs to residents. The average Medicare recipient lays out over $7,500 for prescription drugs annually, according to MedicareGuide, which conducted the study, prompting almost two in three Americans age 65 and over to try to save on prescription drugs in the last year.  (Sklar and Asymkos, 10/19)