Drug Pricing Bill Highlights Limits of Democrats’ Majority Power

House Democrats this week are poised to pass the furthest-reaching drug pricing legislation in decades. It will represent a fraction of what many of them wanted.

The climate change, inflation, and health-care package the Senate passed on a party-line vote last weekend was the result of nearly a year of compromises and negotiations, lawmakers say. The drug-pricing portions faced opposing camps of Democrats: one that wanted it to cover as many people and medicines as possible, and another that wanted to limit its scope to protect the pharmaceutical industry.

Some popular provisions of the package were also trimmed by the ...