Its easy to assume that President Joe Biden and his Democratic Party allies are fooling themselves, fooling the rest of us or maybe both when they say they will pass legislation to reduce prescription drug prices this year.

Congress has never passed this kind of legislation before. Republicans probably wont support it, while Democrats basically have no votes to spare. And the legislations top opponent, the pharmaceutical industry, is literally the most powerful lobbying group in Washington.

But the drug industry just lost a highly visible battle over protecting vaccine patent rights . That feels like a sign that the political environment for prescription drug legislation is more favorable than it has been in a long time. Success is by no means certain, but failure isnt either.

Here are a few reasons why.

Democratic Ideas Are Extremely Popular

The main goal of Democratic proposals is to give the federal government new power over what pharmaceutical companies charge. The idea turns out to be quite popular.

Roughly three in four Americans support allowing the government to negotiate prices directly with manufacturers, according to a poll that West Health and Gallup released Thursday morning. And the result was no outlier. It was strikingly similar to poll findings over the past year from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation as well as from Hart Research and North Star Research .

And prescription drugs arent just some ancillary concern for voters. Nearly half think drug legislation should be a top priority for Congress, according to a Morning Consult/Politico survey that also came out this week.