President Joe Biden has set the stage for an immediate showdown between Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and pharmaceutical companies over the outgoing administration’s proposal to cover diabetes drugs for weight loss under federal insurance programs.
Early Tuesday morning, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) unveiled the proposed rule to subsidize the popular medications.
“It’s a good day for anyone who suffers from obesity,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra told The Associated Press, calling government coverage “a game changer for Americans who can’t afford these drugs otherwise.”
According to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), more than 40 percent of U.S. adults age 20 and older are obese, and nearly 74 percent are at minimum, overweight.
The AP estimated federal coverage of drugs such as Ozempic and Wegovy would cost taxpayers up to $35 billion over 10 years.
“Under the proposal, only those who are considered obese — someone who has a body mass index of 30 or higher — would qualify for coverage,” the AP reported. “Some people may already get coverage of the drugs through Medicare or Medicaid, if they have diabetes or are at risk for stroke or heart disease.”
Kennedy, who was nominated to replace Becerra by President-elect Donald Trump, will have to approve the new rule if confirmed in the new administration. Just one month ago, however, Trump’s potential new HHS chief slammed the latest class of weight-loss drugs as something of a false promise.
“If we just gave good food, three meals a day, to every man, woman and child in our country, we could solve the obesity and diabetes epidemic overnight,” Kennedy said on Fox News just two weeks before Election Day. The Danish drug company Novo Nordisk, he added, is “counting on selling it to Americans because we are so stupid and so addicted to drugs.”
The drugs themselves, meanwhile, come with substantial risks. Ozempic’s website lists nausea, diarrhea, stomach pain, vomiting, and constipation as possible side effects. The medication has also reportedly led to a spike in emergency room visits with patients suffering blurred vision, pancreatitis, malnutrition, and drooping faces. There’s even a term to describe the latter: “Ozempic Face.”
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Last year, however, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) published new guidelines recommending the drugs be deployed to stem the runaway rates of childhood obesity. According to the CDC, roughly 1 in 5 children and adolescents aged 2-19 are categorically obese, coinciding with a surge in childhood disease.
“A sick child,” Kennedy said in his August endorsement speech of President Trump, “is the best thing for the pharmaceutical industry. When American children or adults are sick with a chronic condition, they’re put on medication for their entire life.”
Kennedy’s antagonism of the drug companies is likely to encourage pharmaceutical lobbyists to line up senators against his confirmation next year. Members of the Senate Finance Committee, whom will be the first to vote on Kennedy’s nomination, have raked in nearly $7 million from the pharmaceutical industry over the past half decade, according to a Federalist analysis.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal in September, Kennedy also wants congressional lawmakers to “cap drug prices so that companies can’t charge Americans substantially more than Europeans pay.”
“Today in Germany,” Kenney said, “Ozempic costs less than a tenth of what it does in the U.S. because while Berlin negotiates prices on behalf of all Germans, Washington can’t do the same.”
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