White House rule would expand coverage of anti-obesity drugs - Roll Call

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

57% : Children who are 12 and older who meet the guidelines for obesity and are covered by Medicaid would be eligible for coverage.
55% : Congress has taken some preliminary action to expand access to the drugs under Medicare.
54% : For Medicaid, the proposal would cost the federal government $11 billion and states about $3.8 billion, said Dan Tsai, CMS deputy administrator and director for the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services.
51% : "The Congressional Budget Office estimated in October that a policy authorizing Medicare to cover these drugs would increase federal spending by about $35 billion between 2026-2034.
51% : In June, the House Ways and Means Committee advanced a bill that would allow Medicare to cover the drug for patients who had already been prescribed and taken the drug rather than to all Medicare beneficiaries.Lawmakers also asked HHS to use its "existing legal authority" to lower the prices of these drugs in September.
49% : "CMS said the interpretation followed a precedent in 2010, when Medicare began covering facial injections for Medicare beneficiaries diagnosed with HIV-associated wasting syndrome and depression.
48% : Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure said the proposal reinterprets Medicare statute to cover these medications not as weight-loss drugs but as drugs to manage the chronic condition of obesity.
43% : The proposed rule from the Department of Health and Human Services seeks to expand when Medicare and Medicaid can cover anti-obesity drugs known as GLP-1 inhibitors, sold as Zepbound, Ozempic, Mounjaro and Wegovy.
42% : Currently, Medicare covers the weight-loss drugs in question for beneficiaries diagnosed with diabetes or cardiovascular disease who are also classified as overweight or obese.
27% : Proposal would provide coverage to some 3.4 million in Medicare and 4 million receiving MedicaidThe Biden administration on Tuesday proposed expanding drug coverage under Medicare and Medicaid to include anti-obesity drugs -- a move rebuking Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s critique of the popular medications.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.