BODY POSITIVITY: Medicare will start covering weight-loss drugs on July 1 for the first time. Here’s what you need to know.
Medicare is prohibited by law from covering weight-loss drugs, but the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is allowed to run short-term demonstration projects to test new payment and coverage models. The Bridge effort is part of a deal that the Trump administration announced in November with drugmakers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk to reduce the cost of their blockbuster anti-obesity medications.
Doctors and patient advocates have been clamoring for years to expand Medicare coverage to weight-loss drugs, arguing that obesity should be treated like any disease. The cost of buying GLP-1 medications without insurance can still run into hundreds of dollars.
Dr. Catherine Varney, obesity medicine director at the University of Virginia, has about 100 Medicare patients who will probably be eligible for Bridge program. None of them can afford to pay for weight-loss medications out of pocket, she said. Several have told her they are relieved that they may finally be able to obtain the drugs at a reasonable price.
“Most of these patients that I wanted to start on this medication are ticking time bombs,” said Varney, who is also a trustee of the Obesity Medicine Association. “They’ve got prediabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, all these cardiac risk factors that are leading to heart attack and stroke.”
Maybe it’s time to change the law, because these are not quack medications.
