Adelson donates $30M to help GOP keep House
Las Vegas Sands Corp. Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson gave a Republicanaligned super PAC $30 million this week as the GOP seeks to blunt Democratic efforts to regain control of the House of Representatives.
Adelson, a megadonor to GOP causes, gave the donation to the Congressional Leadership Fund after meeting last week in Las Vegas with House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-wis., who is not seeking re-election but has vowed to help defend the Republican majority.
Democrats need to flip 23 Republican-held House seats in the 2018 midterm election to win back the majority.
The Review-journal is owned by the family of Las Vegas Sands Corp. Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson.
WASHINGTON — After repeatedly promising to rein in skyrocketing prescription drug prices, President Donald Trump on Friday released a multipronged “blueprint” he said would deliver relief to patients “very soon.”
But the president stopped well short of backing any major new effort to use the federal government’s power to negotiate lower prices for patients, a strategy he endorsed as a candidate.
And though Trump used sweeping rhetoric to attack drugmakers, insurers and others he said were fleecing patients, his plan committed to few concrete actions that would immediately challenge industry.
The blueprint includes a series of proposals that the Trump administration says it will study or evaluate, such as possibly requiring pharmaceutical makers to list prices in television ads or giving Medicare Part D drug plans more leeway to adjust which drugs they cover.
Even Trump’s tough talk about going after other nations that negotiate lower prices for their citizens — which the president labeled “free loading” — was accompanied only by instructions to his trade negotiators to raise this issue in talks with U.S. trading partners.
Trump has been promising since he took office that he would take on drugmakers and make medications more affordable for patients.
And senior administration officials — including Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, who took office in January — have signaled for months that reining in prices would be a top priority.
The administration has been working to speed regulatory approval of generic medications to get these cheaper alternatives to patients more quickly.
And Azar said Friday that the administration is looking to gather information to take more steps. “This is not a one and done,” he said.
Trump, meanwhile, promised big results. “We will have tougher negotiation, more competition and much lower prices,” he said. “And it will start to take effect very soon.”