Understanding that this issue could lose Florida and Pennsylvania for the Bushies in November, it looks like (as I’ve been saying for a while) the Administration is getting ready to cave on the banning of drug import issue that its pharma paymasters had inserted into the PDIMA Bill. Yesterday HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson created a Task Force on Drug Importation, which in due course will come back and recommend changing that part of the bill. This has big implications as it’s by far the most unpopular part of the PDIMA bill, and if it goes away opposition to the bill could fade. That will make life a little tricky for the Dems.

Meanwhile the fuss about Tom Scully banning the CMS actuary from telling Congress the truth has been turned into a formal investigation, which will presumably proceed with the same "relentnessness" with which the DOJ has gone after whoever in the White House outed Valerie Plame. So we can expect that to be all cleared up around the time the bill takes effect in 2006!