The following is an excerpt from an article by Sally Pipes, Founder & Chair of the Benjamin Rush Institute, published in Forbes. Click here to read the full article in your browser.
Medicare spends billions of dollars each year treating heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease, cancer and other illnesses caused or worsened by obesity. Yet for decades, federal law has barred the program from covering medicines prescribed to treat obesity itself.
In other words, Medicare has been willing to pay for the costly consequences of excess weight—while refusing to pay for drugs that could address the underlying disease.
The Trump administration has finally begun to correct that contradiction.
This month, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services launched the Medicare GLP-1 Bridge, a demonstration program that gives eligible Medicare beneficiaries access to certain anti-obesity medicines for $50 a month.
The program will run through the end of 2027. It should be the beginning of a permanent change—not a temporary exception to the longstanding rule.
More than 40% of American adults have obesity, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Among Medicare beneficiaries, roughly two-thirds are overweight or have obesity. In other words, this isn’t a niche problem. Obesity is a major driver of chronic illness and healthcare spending nationwide.
That prevalence makes Medicare’s longstanding coverage policy difficult to defend. Obesity is not merely a cosmetic concern or a failure of willpower. The medical community recognizes it as a chronic disease that can lead to years of declining health and costly treatment.
The GLP-1 Bridge reflects that medical consensus—and recognizes that new therapies have fundamentally changed what’s possible in obesity treatment.
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