bill: what are the real keys? real gems are really key, kind of health priorities that democrats have been laying out. bill: you wrote about then legislation this week. the headline and bloomberg law -- "obamacare poison pill meets pricing bill." why do democratic leaders to decide to wring the measures up in in this way and at this time?

what are the concerns of republicans, and you referred to a poison pill, what are they concerned about? alex: the republicans oppose the a.c.a. they don't want to keep putting money into this, they don't want to support the a.c.a., this is a decade of opposition they've had to this. it's little surprise they won't agree with a lot of a.c.a. bills. the official line from democratic leadership is these billed were paired as pay-fors. the drug pricing bill saved the federal government money. the a.c.a. bills cost them money. they have a natural fit. politically, you know, for democrats this is a win, right?

they -- republicans don't get free votes on drug pricing bills. they don't get an opportunity to take part of the democratic health agenda, which is drug pricing, and then leave the a.c.a. so by marrying these, the idea is essentially, you have to take our whole health care agenda or you can -- you can't take a piece of it. if you were to lower health care costs, you have to do it across the board. insurance and particularly for drug pricing. bill: democratic leadership held a rally/news conference ahead of the house floor debate. they will include 27 amendments allow under the rule. what are some of the key amendments you'll be looking for and also some of the members we should be watching for and what they say on the house floor during debate? alex: for republicans, people like michael burgess and greg walden have led the opposition here. a lot of their amendments are going to be focused on splitting the drug pricing bills off from the a.c.a. bills. there is more than 20 amendments to this bill, a lot of them are somewhat piecemeal, meant to clarify or focus on there. representative rochester has

one, i believe it's a little bit about studying a lot of the effects of what the trump administration has done, about what outreach efforts are, and a lot of those are very focused, particularly that one by representative blunt rochester, trying to figure out what the trump administration, how a lot of their effects are rolling back a.c.a. funds. it will be be interesting to see if they go through and how much support that kind of measure might get. bill: president trump has talked a lot and tweeted a lot about drug prices -- pricing. but you tweeted this, the white house officially threatened to veto h.r. 987 the combo a.c.a. drug pricing package. this could give republicans some cover but won't change much of the politics of it. what are some of the concerns of the trump administration? alex: they share the same , you know, concerns that republicans have, they are not going to bolster the affordable care act and its markets.

they are not going to put the money back into them that they took out. and they're obviously not going to pull back any of the policies that they laid out, they're obviously not going to support something that pushes back on the way they've affected the insurance markets for the past few years. so they have said look, we support the drug pricing measures, we are supportive of these measures but not the a.c.a. measures. putting them together is something we won't support. it's their message of we don't want these two issues to be combined in any way. we want to separate them. it's a difficult line to take sometimes. bill: any indication there'll be republican members voting in favor of this legislation? since it's a package of bills, any indication that the senate led by republicans would take up any portion of it? alex: well, the a.c.a. bill that have hit the floor this year have seen very paltry republican support.

i believe the measure getting the house involved in the a.c.a. lawsuit, i think maybe got six or seven republicans on it. the most recent a.c.a. bill got about four. these are mainly people who have , you know in the past supported , some of these or not necessarily been behind the trump administration's changes. that's a pretty small number. i think this is going to be a big test to see how many republicans democrats can peel off. a lot of -- drug pricing and health care costs are a big part of the 2018 election. they're setting up to be a big part of the 2020 election. i think a lot of members are doing the calculus and asking themselves, can i go home and face the, obviously what's going to come. the ads, the attacks from my challenger saying i voted against drug pricing bills, voted against bills that my opponent says are going to improve the costs here. so i think this is going to be a big test for republicans to see how well they can keep their house together. bill: we've been talking to alex rohoff.

he is the senior reporter for bloomberg governor. you can follow him on twitter, bgov.com. alex, thanks for joining us. alex: thanks for having me. >> c-span's "washington withal,vejournal," live everydy news and stories that a vacuum. coming up, we'll talk about future of health care, first with congressman donna shalala and then oklahoma senator tom coburn. and a new poll looking at voters' thoughts on health care with realclearpolitics' carl cannon. be sure to watch "washington journal" live at 7:00 a.m. eastern this morning. join the discussion. >> next, u.s. forest service chief vicki christiansen testifies on her 2020 budget request before a senate subcommittee where she faces questions