| A quick look at what's on tap next week: - House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) announced that the House will take up the Senate's version of a bill that would let patients bypass the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in requesting access to experimental drugs. Expect Democrats to raise patient safety concerns.
- We'll also be watching to see if the administration keeps up the media tour to sell its prescription drug blueprint. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb is slated to speak at an event Wednesday hosted by The Atlantic.
- President Trump will speak Tuesday at the Susan B. Anthony List's "Campaign for Life" gala, an annual event that raises money for the anti-abortion group's campaign efforts.
President Trump's choice for Veterans Affairs Secretary: none of the above. Despite a handful of names floated from the White House in recent weeks, Trump today said he will tap Robert Wilkie, the current interim VA Secretary, to be the permanent head of the department. In typical Trump fashion, the announcement came during a speech about another topic, prison reform, and was a complete surprise to Wilkie, who was in the audience. "He doesn't know this yet," Trump said. "Sorry to ruin the surprise." Wilkie will face the challenge of taking over a sprawling agency that has struggled to move past a scandal surrounding wait times for patients at VA medical centers. The agency also just signed a massive contract with Cerner to modernize its electronic health records. He must also grapple with a fierce partisan battle over whether to privatize VA health-care services that resulted in the ouster of the previous secretary David Shulkin. We took a look at Trump's decision here. One of the buzzier aspects of Trump's drug pricing plan: Let the FDA decide if list prices of drugs should be included in advertisements. A group of five senators sent a letter to eight pharmaceutical companies urging them to make that move quickly and voluntarily. Who: Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Angus King (I-Maine). Key quote: "As an honest first step to the American public, we urge you to immediately and voluntarily commit to transparency and disclose the price of your prescription drugs in direct-to-consumer advertisements," their letter to drug companies says. Context: While pharmaceutical companies have to include warnings and side effects for drugs in television advertisements, they currently do not have to include prices. Transparency is intrinsic in the debate over drug pricing, but not everyone believes this move to let the public know a drug's list price is beneficial. Some have voiced concerns that including the list price of drugs could confuse consumers or deter them from purchasing the product, since the price at a pharmacy is often much lower if the individual has health insurance. At an event with reporters Tuesday, Lori Reilly, an executive vice president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), raised the issue of forcing companies to include the price of drugs in ads, arguing "it's an open question about whether or not it's constitutional." We have more about the controversial proposal here. | 
