Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) is pressing Senate leadership to hold a floor vote on bipartisan legislation that would cap insulin costs for people with private insurance before lawmakers skip town until after the midterm election - a scheduling request roughly as ambitious as asking Congress to fix the roof before hurricane season.

"President Trump campaigned on immediately lowering costs for the American people, yet he's done just the opposite. With millions of American families facing spiking prices as a result of this Administration's disastrous health care policies, my INSULIN Act is one immediate step Congress can take to directly lower costs for millions of Americans," Shaheen said in a statement Monday.

The retiring lawmaker wants the bill across the finish line before the end of the year. Shaheen has personally spoken to the White House about the measure, and staff-level conversations have been ongoing since, according to a Democratic aide - which is Washington-speak for "people are talking, nothing is happening, please enjoy this update."

The legislation would cap out-of-pocket costs for insulin at $35 for people with commercial insurance, expanding a cap for Medicare beneficiaries that passed in President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act in 2022. It would also create a pilot program in 10 states to cap costs for uninsured people - because apparently the uninsured also deserve to not die of rationed insulin.

The bill is led by Shaheen along with Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) and John Kennedy (R-La.). It passed the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee by a vote of 17-5 in July. In total, it has 28 co-sponsors divided equally between the parties - meaning there are 60 votes in the Senate if all Democrats vote for it, a mathematical fact that has never once stopped the Senate from doing nothing.

While the effort likely won't yield a vote this week, the most likely path forward would be including the measure as part of a year-end spending bill. Discussions are also happening about attaching it to the must-pass defense policy and spending authorization bill - the legislative equivalent of stapling your grocery list to a mortgage application.

A bipartisan House version was introduced earlier this month by Reps. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), Angie Craig (D-Minn.), Kim Schrier (D-Wash.), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa) and Rob Bresnahan (R-Pa.). Miller-Meeks and Bresnahan face competitive reelection races, which is surely unrelated to their sudden interest in affordable medicine.

There's no guarantee the measure will pass. Lawmakers have discussed the idea of an insulin cap for years but haven't been able to get legislation over the finish line over GOP resistance to the government setting prices. Notably, HELP committee Chair Bill Cassidy (R-La.) voted against the bill, arguing it created an unnecessary and duplicative government grant program. Cassidy noted many community health centers already provide deeply discounted insulin to patients who need it and criticized the federal drug pricing program that he says hospitals are abusing - a position that is, at minimum, a position.

Welcome to The Hill's Healthcare newsletter, we're Nathaniel Weixel and Joseph Choi - every week we follow the latest moves on how Washington impacts your health.

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How policy will be impacting the healthcare sector this week and beyond:

Pennsylvania on Monday surpassed 900 measles cases, after adding more than 100 additional cases in the past week. The Pennsylvania Department of Health updated its measles dashboard Monday, putting the total number of cases in the state at 903, after 115 new infections were recorded in the past week. Pennsylvania is currently reporting the highest total number of measles cases in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - a sentence that would have sounded absurd in 2019 and sounds merely exhausting now.

Senate Democratic PAC hits Collins over Medicaid cuts she voted against

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Blood pressure medication recalled nationwide under FDA's Class II risk level

(NEXSTAR) - If you are one of millions of Americans taking medication to lower blood pressure, you may want to check the label. Inventia Healthcare Limited, based in Mumbai, India, is voluntarily recalling 13,567 bottles of chlorthalidone tablets that may not dissolve properly, potentially lowering the dosage that gets absorbed by the body. The bottles of 25 mg tablets being recalled nationwide have the batch number RISA24002.

Upcoming news themes and events we're watching:

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