As a 44-year-old member of Era X, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida may well be an not likely candidate to wrest his celebration’s older electorate clear of Donald J. Trump, a 76-year-old child boomer.

However he is attempting anyway.

As Mr. DeSantis closes in at the legit rollout of a 2024 marketing campaign for president, he is looking for to make early inroads with this huge, politically influential staff of electorate, and doing so via interesting to their pocketbook issues.

He has centered particularly on his efforts to decrease prescription drug prices in Florida, together with pushing the government for permission to import inexpensive medication from Canada. This month, he signed a invoice that he says will convey down prices via regulating drug business middlemen.

“We predict that well being care is just too dear,” Mr. DeSantis mentioned as he signed the invoice in Palm Seaside County. “Pharmaceuticals are too dear.”

“In our well being care gadget,” he went on, “you spot numerous forms, crimson tape. And persons are making a living off the program that aren’t actually offering price to the gadget.”

As he travels the country showing at Republican fund-raisers, the governor has added a line in regards to the new legislation to his stump speech.

The makes an attempt to spotlight drug prices come as Mr. Trump, who can be Mr. DeSantis’s primary Republican rival, has attacked him for having supported plans to restructure Social Safety and Medicare — systems which can be sacrosanct to many older American citizens. (Mr. Trump himself has expressed equivalent sentiments up to now.)

Greater than 60 % of Republican and Republican-leaning electorate are over 50 years outdated, consistent with the Pew Analysis Middle. Older electorate additionally powered Mr. DeSantis’s overwhelming re-election victory closing yr. He gained 6 in 10 votes from the ones over 65, consistent with go out polling.

The problem of pharmaceuticals, the costs of that have surged lately, displays one in every of Mr. DeSantis’s benefits in a number one: the power to advertise a long record of rules he has signed this yr.

However speaking about drug prices additionally illustrates the prospective messaging demanding situations that Mr. DeSantis may just face as a candidate. The governor, who considers himself a coverage skilled, has occasionally struggled when seeking to make the subject available for electorate. Drug prices are a ways drier and extra difficult than the crimson meat he has fed to his base on conservative reasons like defunding range systems at state faculties, banning gender-transition maintain minors and proscribing the power of undocumented immigrants to seek out paintings and achieve get right of entry to to social products and services.

And since he’s signing such a lot of new expenses — together with 37 in one day — even some attentive Floridians are blind to his newest try to convey down drug prices with regulation that regulates business go-betweens known as pharmacy receive advantages managers.

Al Salvi, 61, is the type of voter who would appear prone to know in regards to the new legislation. Mr. Salvi, a most cancers survivor who volunteers with AARP in Florida, traveled to Tallahassee from South Florida to testify about 3 expenses all over this yr’s lawmaking consultation. In 2019, he gave the impression with Mr. DeSantis at an tournament selling the initiative to import pharmaceuticals from Canada and different nations. However he hadn’t heard in regards to the legislation focused on pharmacy receive advantages managers.

“The hell is that?” Mr. Salvi mentioned in an interview. “Each and every time I’m going to the drugstore, I see a pharmacist. I’ve by no means noticed a pharmacy receive advantages supervisor.”

“The issue with the messaging,” he added, “is that folks don’t seem to be going to are aware of it, as a result of they’ve were given to know the way the provision chain works.”

Pharmacy receive advantages managers paintings with drug producers, insurance policy and pharmacies to offer medication to sufferers at a bargain. However affected person advocates query whether or not receive advantages managers go sufficient financial savings onto customers. All 50 states have sought higher oversight of them, consistent with the Nationwide Academy for State Well being Coverage.

Lobbyists for the business dispute that receive advantages managers don’t seem to be serving to customers. And so they say that Florida’s new legislation, which handed with huge bipartisan improve, is not going to cut back drug prices.

When Mr. DeSantis publicly discusses the problem, he can occasionally come off as opaque. He has a tendency to speak in brief about how he believes that receive advantages managers harm each customers and group pharmacies, ahead of diving into detailed explanations of practices that he disparages, the use of technical phrases like “arbitrage alternative” and “vertically built-in entities.” He frequently refers to pharmacy receive advantages managers via the acronym “P.B.M.s.”

The governor’s place of job says that if electorate don’t know in regards to the coverage adjustments, it’s the information media’s fault.

“May just it’s conceivable that folks omit the good things that Governor DeSantis does as a result of media like The New York Instances select as a substitute to enlarge most effective the ones angles and tales that advertise their leftist schedule?” Mr. DeSantis’s press secretary, Bryan Griffin, wrote in an e mail. (Mr. Griffin joined the governor’s political operation on Monday.) “We’ve got had a information convention just about each day for the closing two weeks selling the governor’s document collection of legislative accomplishments from this consultation. The issue does now not lie with us.”

Those that find out about the problem say they imagine Mr. DeSantis’s plan may have an actual have an effect on on drug costs and transparency, specifically compared to Mr. Trump’s efforts. When Mr. Trump used to be within the White Area, he attempted to finish rebates for pharmacy receive advantages managers, arguing that they had been using up the costs of medications. However he in the long run dropped the problem for maximum of his time period.

“Trump’s plan used to be really extensive. Nevertheless it ended up being extra bark than chew,” mentioned Antonio Ciaccia, the executive government of 46brooklyn, an Ohio-based nonprofit staff thinking about drug-pricing training and analysis. “DeSantis’s plan is extra chew than bark.”

Beneath Florida’s new legislation, a state suggest will box shopper and pharmacy court cases in opposition to the drug middlemen. And state regulators could have huge enforcement authority, together with the power to dole out hefty fines or even revoke a pharmacy receive advantages supervisor’s proper to function in Florida.

The state may also be capable to check out contracts via receive advantages managers, who’re considering just about each step of drug pricing. The 3 greatest middlemen, CVS Caremark, Specific Scripts and OptumRx, personal a majority of the marketplace. They are below commonplace possession with insurance policy and occasionally retail pharmacies. For instance, CVS Well being owns CVS Caremark, in addition to the CVS retail pharmacy chain and the medical health insurance corporate Aetna.

“The oversight will have to lend a hand shine a mild into the black field of drug costs,” mentioned State Senator Jason Brodeur, an Orlando-area Republican who backed the invoice.

President Biden, for his phase, is well-liked by older electorate and has driven his personal plans to chop drug costs. However his management has blocked Florida and different states from bringing in Canadian medication, main Mr. DeSantis to sue the Meals and Drug Management closing yr. Florida handed its invoice taking into account the import of Canadian medication 4 years in the past.

“It’s been held up via the Biden management and the F.D.A. as a result of they are saying it’s now not secure to buy medication from Canada,” Mr. DeSantis mentioned not too long ago. “They’re simply operating interference for the pharmaceutical corporations.”

Carly Kempler, a spokeswoman for the F.D.A., mentioned the company had an obligation “to make certain that the proposed importation would pose no further chance to the general public’s well being and protection whilst attaining a vital aid in the price of coated merchandise to the American shopper.”

For now, Mr. DeSantis nonetheless seems to be workshopping his messaging on pharmaceuticals.

At a prevent in rural Wisconsin, he in brief discussed the legislation on pharmacy receive advantages managers.

“We’ve moved to carry Large Pharma responsible via shining a mild and reining in such things as pharmacy receive advantages managers that reason you to pay extra for dear drugs,” he mentioned.

The gang reacted with delicate applause, having burst into cheers moments previous when Mr. DeSantis described a invoice he signed permitting the loss of life penalty for sexual battery in opposition to youngsters.