The Senate will still have an extremely narrow majority in 2023, but with some new curveballs, like HELP Chairman Bernie Sanders and a GOP House across the Capitol.

• That might not sound like a recipe for tons of health policy action, but here's what Peter is hearing about the areas where senators are at least going to try.

1. PBMs. Action on PBMs is maybe the issue with the best chance, given the bipartisan and bicameral interest in targeting any role they may have in high drug costs for patients.

• Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden told Peter before lawmakers left for the holidays that "middlemen and cost containment" will be health care priorities in 2023, using the somewhat derogatory term for PBMs.
• "I know of people in the House who I think will work with us," Wyden said.
• He did not get into specifics of what he wants to do, but in the past he has proposed the C-THRU Act, which includes transparency requirements on the rebates PBMs receive and would require PBMs to pass on a minimum percentage of rebates to health plans.

2. Nursing shortage. Incoming HELP Committee ranking member Bill Cassidy previously told Axios he wants to work with Sanders on the nursing shortage. Now, Sanders is reciprocating.

What they're saying: Sanders told Peter he "absolutely" can work with Cassidy on the "catastrophic crisis" in nursing.

• "State after state is spending huge amounts of money on traveling nurses rather than building their own workforce," Sanders said. "I look forward to working with Senator Cassidy, among many other things, to greatly expand our nursing [workforce]."
• The specifics of any agreement are less clear. Sanders has proposed increased funding for nursing education through the Nurse Corps program, but Cassidy was noncommittal on more money, saying he wants to examine the issue first.

Sanders wasn't ready to talk about the big progressive causes he's known for. We asked him if he plans to try to call in pharmaceutical executives to testify, for example, but he said it's "a little bit too early to talk about that."

3. Mental health parity. Wyden says he is going to make a push for making sure insurers cover mental health at the same level as physical health, but it has been tougher to get bipartisan interest on this issue.

• Asked if he would make a renewed push for financial penalties, Wyden said he's going to "keep all our options open," but insisted that what he called "ghost networks" without sufficient mental health providers are "outrageous."

4. Costs. "Next year I think there's an opportunity to do real reforms in the cost containment space," Wyden said. He named capping out of pocket insulin costs for people with private insurance as "up at the top of the list."

• Reality check: That idea has struggled to gain much GOP support, and supporters failed to get it into the omnibus last month.

The bottom line: There are a lot of unknowns about the new year, such as how chaotic the House will be, and how much Sanders will prioritize bipartisanship versus progressive causes.

• But it's at least possible for Congress to find somewhat narrower areas of health policy to work on, now that big-ticket partisan items like Obamacare repeal and Medicare drug negotiation are either dead for now or already passed.

You already knew it was going to be an oversight-heavy year in the House, but there are also some areas where health care legislation could move ahead with a narrow Republican majority, Victoria and Maya report.

• The biggest is PBM transparency, which will also be a focus in the Senate — but health care costs and data privacy are likely to top the agenda, too.

Here's what aides and lobbyists told us to expect:

1. PBMs. We’ve heard this will absolutely be a hot topic in the 2023 Congress in both chambers.

• An Energy and Commerce aide confirmed to Victoria in December that the committee will revisit PBM transparency. So will the Oversight Committee. And look for Rep. Buddy Carter to launch his bipartisan caucus focused solely on PBM reform this month.

2. Health care costs. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, incoming Energy and Commerce chair, wants to increase price transparency in health care to bring down costs, a committee aide said.

3. Data privacy. Energy and Commerce also put quite a bit of work last year into crafting a bipartisan data privacy bill, which has the possibility of being reintroduced this session.

• The American Data Privacy and Protection Act would have created a national standard around protecting people’s information, including sensitive health details and geolocation data.

4. Fentanyl. Easing the fentanyl crisis will be another Energy and Commerce focal point, a GOP committee aide said.

• McMorris Rodgers wants to permanently designate fentanyl analogues as Schedule 1 drugs and conduct oversight on tech companies’ role in the crisis. (Some Democrats have opposed past attempts to permanently schedule the substances.)

What else we’re watching: Conversations around reforming Medicare payments to physicians may ramp up this year. House lawmakers collected feedback on how to reform the system last year, and now’s the time to strengthen value-based care programs, another GOP aide said.

• And cutting Medicare programs could become a topic of discussion again in relation to the looming debt ceiling talks this year.

Don't expect these topics to get much attention right away. All three of the health-related bills in the floor schedule Steve Scalise released for the first two weeks are focused on abortion.

• They would make the Hyde Act permanent, condemn attacks on pro-life facilities and protect infants born alive after an attempted abortion.
• But once those votes are out of the way, the path will be clear for the other health care priorities that will take a little longer to work their way through the process.

The oversight agenda will take time, too. Investigations could encompass drug pricing, 340B discounts, vaccine and lab safety, antimicrobial resistance, the Biden administration’s family glitch fix, surprise billing implementation and more, GOP aides told Maya.

• The House Oversight Committee will also have hearings on COVID-19 origins, pandemic relief spending and nursing homes under former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Oversight communications director Jessica Collins told Victoria.
• The Oversight Committee will continue to house a select subcommittee on the coronavirus pandemic, just with a new focus on the origins of the virus, according to the Republican rules package.
• Expect Republicans to also conduct oversight into implementation of the drug pricing provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act.

If you've seen that car Sen. Richard Burr used to drive around the Hill (it's a Volkswagen Type 181), you've probably wondered: "If he's retiring, does that mean the car is retiring too?"

• It is. Per his office, he's going to park it in front of the Capitol one last time Tuesday and then have it towed home.