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Lawmakers and the Obama administration are ratcheting up efforts to target pharmaceutical companies over high-priced drugs, a sign that legislators are trying to bridge partisan differences to tackle a key driver of rising health care costs. Some specialty drugs can now run $100,000 or more a year, and the issue has been amplified by several high-profile cases in which makers boosted prices dramatically and rapidly. (Armour, 11/15)

In the presidential campaign, Sens. Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz are rising in the polls. Back in the Senate, their ambitions can sometimes cause a nuisance for fellow lawmakers, including vulnerable Republicans up for re-election next year. The latest example: Rubio and Cruz are pushing for the Senate to go farther than the House when it takes up legislation to repeal President Barack Obama's health care law. They want to make good on promises to repeal "Obamacare" in its entirety, rather than a more targeted repeal approved recently by the House. (Werner, 11/14)

Ben Carson lambastes “Obamacare” as much as the next Republican presidential candidate, but the neurosurgeon-turned-politician has a history of health care ideas that puts him outside mainstream conservative thought on the issue. Private insurance companies, he has said, should be little more than “non-profit service organizations,” with government capping their profit margins. Meanwhile, the federal government could offer catastrophic care coverage akin to the National Flood Insurance Program, paid for with taxes on insurers’ profits. (Barrow, 11/16)