Tired: Medicare negotiation. Wired: Prosecuting pharma for price hikes 

Twenty Democratic presidential candidates will take the stage tonight and tomorrow (at 8 p.m. ET on CNN) in the second round of 2020 primary debates. If round one was any indication, drug prices and "Big Pharma" will be something of a theme. (And AARP has clearly been hard at work trying to get a number of drug pricing questions into this debate. See here, here, and here.)

Candidates’ ideas so far have ranged from the consensus, like Medicare negotiation, to the radical, like prosecuting drug makers for excessive price hikes. (Thank you, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand.) 

For the more mainstream ideas, Democrats have relied on a familiar cast of outside advisers, STAT's Lev Facher reports in a new storythis morning, including Chris Jennings, a health policy expert and veteran of the Obama and Clinton administrations. Candidates have also leaned on a pair of Harvard professors: Dr. Aaron Kesselheim, a drug pricing expert, and Richard Frank, a health economist who has also proven central to Capitol Hill policymaking this year. Candidates' biggest ideas: "seizing patents" under Bayh-Dole, setting price caps for monopoly drugs, and enacting a Trump-style international price index. 

"They all want to do something on drugs," said Jennings, who, according to campaign sources, has already worked with the campaigns of Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Pete Buttigieg. "There isn't a candidate who doesn't. In some ways, it's a competition: Who's willing and able to be the most aggressive and effective?" More here.