This Popular Health Care Initiative Could Be On The Chopping Block If Donald Trump Wins

This article is part of HuffPost’s biweekly politics newsletter. Click here to subscribe.

A big, popular health care initiative could be on the chopping block if Donald Trump and his Republican allies win full control of the federal government in the November election.

No, I’m not talking about the Affordable Care Act — although, as noted in these pages previously, its future really would be in peril.

I’m talking about the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark legislation that Democrats passed and President Joe Biden signed in 2022.

Most people know the IRA as a climate bill. And that’s completely understandable. Its subsidies and tax incentives for clean energy account for the largest commitment of federal resources in the legislation and could have the biggest effect on the American economy.

But the IRA also had some health care provisions. The most significant of those was a series of steps to reduce the price of drugs in Medicare .

They include a cap on the price of insulin , a limit on out-of-pocket costs and penalties for drugmakers who raise prices faster than the rate of inflation . Yet another feature authorizes the government to negotiate directly with manufacturers over the prices of some drugs.

That last feature is probably the best known ― and the most controversial politically. Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has called for extending those negotiations to more drugs, just as Biden has. Democratic leaders in Congress say they want to do the same.

They know they can’t count on Republican support. The IRA got zero GOPvotes when it went through Congress. The drug pricing negotiations in particular are exactly the sort of regulation that conservatives hate on principle