It takes a very particular kind of political brainworm to look at a country where nearly half the population is obese, where Medicare and Medicaid hemorrhage cash treating diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and cancer — and say: let’s not pay for the medicine that actually fixes the root problem.
And yet, here we are.
GLP-1 medications, such as Zepbound and Wegovy, appear to be the first truly practical and measurable tools in the fight against obesity. And it’s a fight America has been losing for some time. It makes everything more complicated, including schooling, military and police recruitment, and, of course, it strains the healthcare system in the long term.
These aren’t fad diets or late-night infomercial garbage. They’re clinical, FDA-approved drugs with proven, repeatable results. They make people eat less. They make people lose weight. They make people healthier. The trial data, lived experiences, and economic modeling all back it up, now.
So why, in God’s name, are Medicare and Medicaid still banned from covering them?
The answer, naturally, is bureaucracy. Specifically, rules written in a different century, when “obesity” was treated like a cosmetic problem instead of what it actually is: a chronic, degenerative, society-wrecking disease. These regulations are so old that they might as well be written in typewriter ink or sent via fax. And they remain in place today, even as America’s health outcomes spiral and healthcare costs explode — not despite them, but because of them.
This is both a policy oversight and a moral failure. It’s also an utter financial farce.
Because when you don’t treat obesity at the source, you get to pay for everything that follows: heart disease, diabetes, kidney failure, amputations, strokes, early dementia, and cancers. You also get to pay for all the consequences of those conditions: hospital beds, nursing homes, permanent disability, and premature death.
Americans spend hundreds of billions of dollars every single year dealing with obesity and its aftermath.
A recent study found that covering GLP-1s under Medicare alone, without involvement from private insurance, would generate nearly $1 trillion in economic and social benefits over the next decade. It’s a Manhattan Project for public health, sitting right in front of us and still being ignored. And while America dithers, the consequences compound.
Patients desperate for help are turning to third-world compounders. Backroom operators cooking up unregulated versions of these drugs, often sourced from China or God knows where. The FDA itself has been warning people: these versions are riskier, less effective, and sometimes outright dangerous. But when your insurance doesn’t cover the legitimate option, what do you expect people to do?
And guess who’s hit hardest? Poor people. Working-class Americans who can’t afford the sticker price, or who cannot wait for the system to get its act together. The wealthy are getting thinner and healthier, and everyone else is getting sicker. This is not a populist healthcare model.
This is where the left also usually shrieks about inequality. And for once, they’d be right. However, it’s their regulatory regime that enforces the inequality.
A DPAC poll from earlier this year found nearly 70% of Republican voters and Trump supporters back Medicare and Medicaid coverage of GLP-1s. That is what we call consensus. That’s people using their eyes and their brains and saying, “Yeah, this makes sense.”
Because it does make sense.
Making America Healthy Again means using the tools we have. It means giving people choices.
Tackling obesity isn’t like elective Botox or some reality-TV lifestyle add-on. It’s a public health necessity.
It is infinitely cheaper, more intelligent, and humane to pay for weight loss up front than it is to bankroll the slow, brutal consequences of doing nothing.
America is a nation spending billions cleaning up after obesity, and zero on stopping it at the source.
That’s not just stupid. That’s sabotage.
President Trump and Congress, it is time for change.
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