Biden Proposes Coverage of Obesity Drugs in Medicare, Medicaid

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

54% : Medicare and Medicaid recipients with obesity would have access to coverage of pricey GLP-1 receptor agonists like semaglutide (Wegovy) or tirzepatide (Zepbound) under a regulation proposed Tuesday by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
51% : This is similar to what the agency did when it came to covering drugs to combat wasting and cachexia in AIDS patients, Meena Seshamani, MD, PhD, director of the Center for Medicare, said on the call.
51% : "As for the cost of coverage, CMS estimates that Medicare will spend $25 billion over a 10-year period on the GLP-1 drug coverage, Seshamani said.
50% : On the Medicaid side, CMS estimates that the cost will be $14.8 billion over 10 years, with the federal government picking up $11 billion and the states paying the remainder, Dan Tsai, director of the Center for Medicaid and CHIP, said on the call.
47% : "States are feeling substantial state budget pressure, and we are doing our part to make sure that patients, Medicaid enrollees all across the country can get access to life-saving and life-altering medications," he said.
42% : Historically, this has meant that drugs used for weight loss, even when used for treatment of individuals with obesity, have been excluded from Medicare prescription drug coverage for Medicaid," with some states covering them and others not.

*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.