The unlikely lawmaker trying to build a drug pricing coalition

Rep. Peter Welch isn’t exactly a Blue Dog Democrat — the Vermont progessive is known for pushing clean energy policies and campaign finance reform. But lately he’s trying to work hand-in-hand with the GOP to get something moving on drug pricing — including some of the House’s most conservative members, like Rep. Mark Meadows, the North Carolina Republican who helped found the House Freedom Caucus.

He’s got the ear of the White House, too, he tells STAT. Welch had breakfast with HHS Secretary Alex Azar, Domestic Policy Council Director Joe Grogan, and Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney just last month. “It was to get a sense of what I thought was the level of the support for action [on drug pricing] in the House,” Welch told STAT.

“I’m always talking about drug prices and I talk to everybody to the point where they turn the other way and run away when they see me coming,” Welch added in an interview Monday. 

Meadows told STAT last week he hopes he can work with Welch on legislation to shore up some of the administration’s drug pricing ideas. “There are a number of us who want to work on the legislative side so that anything that’s done through executive order could be codified in statute,” he said.

It remains to be seen however, whether the bipartisan goodwill will evaporate once lawmakers actually have to vote on the issue. Meadows himself admitted that it is just “the beginning of that bipartisan dialogue to work on legislation.”

Welch added: “In all likelihood, a number of us here will be trying to go a good deal further than our Republican colleagues, or maybe even the administration, will feel comfortable with.”