The White House has assured the drug industry it will oppose a House proposal that would let the government negotiate drug prices and extract additional drug company savings. The move came after drug industry lobbyists demanded the White House publicly affirm its commitment to a secret deal to reduce drug costs under healthcare reform. The drug industry agreed to produce savings of $80 billion. The White House disclosure marks the first acknowledgment of the assurances the drug industry received in return. In response, the co-chair of the House Progressive Caucus, Arizona Democrat Raul Grijalva, said the deal raises the question of whether “industry groups [will] be the ones at the table who get the first big piece of the pie, and we just fight over the crust.”