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Nothing typifies the failures of health care in the United States like prescription drugs. Americans pay more for their medications — including those developed in America, with taxpayer dollars — than residents of any other country in the world. So many patients are rationing or outright skipping essential medications that stories of people dying for want of basic drugs — or fleeing the country to avoid that fate — have become commonplace. And despite years in the spotlight, the issue is no closer to being resolved: Prescription drug prices rose four times faster than inflation in the past six months alone. (7/6)

One abuse of the Trump years has been federal judges who exceed their power to strike down directives they don’t like on policy grounds, from association health plans to the travel ban. But on Monday the Trump Administration received a deserved rebuke on an extralegal rule on drug pricing.Federal Judge Amit Mehta blocked a Health and Human Services rule that would require many drug manufacturers to disclose the list price of drugs in television advertisements. Such transparency sounds innocuous, though in practice consumers learn nothing about their out-of-pocket costs after insurance. With side-effect warnings, a 30-second ad would tell viewers: Don’t buy this; it’s expensive and may kill you. (7/9)

A hodgepodge of news this week is telling the confusing and contradictory story of President Donald Trump’s efforts to change American health care. On Monday, a federal judge blocked the administration’s efforts to force drugmakers to disclose the often astronomical list prices of medicines in their TV ads. It was intended to shame pharma into lowering prices, and would have been the first of the Trump administration’s major drug-cost initiatives to actually take effect. On Tuesday, oral arguments were set for a Department of Justice-backed case that could wipe out the Affordable Care Act. Wednesday will reportedly see the president reveal an ambitious set of initiatives intended to rein in spending on kidney costs. (Max Nisen, 7/9)

It isn’t lost on the public that the pharmaceutical industry is putting profits over people. Over 80% of Americans across party lines believe that lowering drug costs should be a “top priority” for lawmakers. Policymakers across the political spectrum have put the industry on notice, holding hearings with pharmaceutical company CEOs and introducing a flurry of policies to rein in high-cost medicines. President Trump also made lowering drug costs a priority, and went as far as accusing drugmakers of “getting away with murder” on the campaign trail. Yet the industry continues to operate as if it’s business as usual, putting profits over people’s health. Case in point: the second-largest pharmaceutical merger this year made headlines in late June with a $63 billion deal between AbbVie and Botox maker Allergan. (Katy Milani, 7/10)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has spent her entire life immersed in the Democratic Party, so she knows well the history of its leaders’ most momentous legislative accomplishments. Minor tweaks to a broken status quo are not on that list. President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal is on the list. So is the Medicare program secured by President Lyndon Johnson. Those landmark achievements carry with them a lesson for the Speaker and her congressional colleagues as they consider how to respond to the American public’s deep frustration with prescription drug prices. (Fran Quigley, 7/8)

When a deadly disease is treatable, but the price is out of reach for many people, that’s an obvious problem in our health care system. When the disease is highly infectious, like hepatitis C, the threat is larger and requires a response from the system before more people get it and deaths rise. Costs do, too, at $24,000 per patient.Louisiana is doing something right in health care, trying out a better way to get access to hep C treatments for poor people. (7/8)

As tensions between the U.S. and China escalate, Washington is waking up to the threat posed by Beijing’s longstanding espionage and cyber hacking. But there’s another looming problem — and one that’s been overlooked for too long: America’s growing dependence on China for prescription drugs. Right now, millions of Americans are taking medicines made in China — medications sold in big box and grocery store pharmacies, administered in hospitals, and used by the VA and military facilities around the world. This is different from illegal fentanyl, or the counterfeit drugs sold on the internet. (Rosemary Gibson, 7/9)