brian talk about what a big deal it would be if they get this bill passed on negotiating drug prices and the health care subsidies. that alone will still have a huge impact on a lot of americans. the standard and the reason i think voters are upset is because they looked at this bill the white house was talking about last year with democrats and it was this huge expansive bill. child care, elder care. all of these things were included in it. when you take all of that away, the negotiating drug prices and health care subsidies, which is an aspect of that, now it s the main thing based on what senator manchin is saying, so it sets up the different expectation for voters, i think, is what the white house is dealing with. there s this enormous gap. this is the central political problem of the biden administration. i think is partly why his approval numbers seem to be fading. the democratic base was promised the moon. you know, they said if you give us all three branches of government, we
drug makers can charge for insulin, limiting it to $35 for a month for people who have diabetes, and it would allow medicare to begin negotiating drug prices with drug makers for certain medicines. in particular, medicines that have been on the market for a long time. and only a set number of drugs each year. theoretically, that bulk buying power that medicare has could help them lower the price of drugs, driving down the cost across the board. a number of things the administration is trying to tackle here. there has been a lot of back and forth in congress going on. it appears democrats may have settled on a plan. of course, that s just sort of one step in the bigger road of getting this bill package passed. i will note there has been an interesting dynamic here. the pharmaceutical industry has been out in front on helping fight the covid pandemic with vaccines and anti-virals. so while you have the federal government spending billions of dollars to the pharmaceutical industry to help
losing the confidence. what people need to understand is that donald trump is trying to undermine people s confidence in election results. if people don t believe that an election result is it is true. it is honest. then they lose faith in the government. that election day is most fundamental element of the democracy. confidence in the people s vote. before i let you go, we have about 90 seconds to go and want to touch on the spending plan and the infrastructure bill. they hoped to vote tuesday and now house democrats want time to craft language for final agreement. how long do you think will play out? what are your hopes for getting sounds they have progress on negotiating drug prices and maybe how hopeful are you for paid leave to get in there? i don t know what will happen but there s significant things to happen in both bills.
bright as richard is suggesting, why is bernie sanders there in the senate saying he s uncertain. he wants to see the text. why are the progressives holding this up? the answer to that is that they have gotten to the point of not embarrassing joe biden or saving his presidency is no longer their goal. what the progressives want is specific things. for bernie sanders, it s negotiating drug prices with the government. that is out of the bill. he s upset about that. our reporting tells us that the progressives in the house are upset that there s not stronger enforcement mechanisms in the bill for some of the climate provisions. that s why they re saying they want to read the text. this is a once in a lifetime opportunity for the left to get the things that they wanted and it s not going to obviously settle for half a loaf. so i think this is far, far from over. i suspect it s going to run past next week for sure.