Obesity drugs: Will Trump’s plan lower costs?

President Trump wants to “make America slim again,” said Kara Kennedy in The Free Press. Standing beside drug execs in the Oval Office earlier this month, Trump announced deals with Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk that will cut the price of their GLP-1 weight loss medicines, Zepbound and Wegovy, in return for a three-year exemption from his 100% pharmaceutical tariffs. Medicare recipients will pay a $50 monthly co-pay for the drugs, which will also be available on TrumpRx.gov—a government-run site—for $350 a month. That’s a steep discount on current list prices, which top $1,000, and will expand access to the “single most effective intervention we have against obesity,” a disease that kills up to 500,000 Americans and costs the U.S. health care system some $173 billion every year. With Trump, “it’s always hard to separate hype from substance,” said Larry Edelman in The Boston Globe, and wide coverage gaps remain. Medicare is barred from covering weight loss drugs, so patients must have a related health condition such as prediabetes or hypertension to be eligible. Still, Trump “deserves credit” for tackling the cost issue.

Lower GLP-1 prices “could benefit millions of Americans,” said The Washington Post in an editorial, but this is the wrong way to cut costs. Trump’s ultimate goal is to peg U.S. drug prices to “the lower levels seen in other developed countries.” That “might sound appealing,” except that if a government has a heavy hand in drug pricing and distribution, it can also ration who gets it. In the U.K.’s socialized system, for example, obesity meds cost under $200 a month—but “your BMI must hit 40, and you must have an additional four health conditions, to become eligible.” And it’s easy to imagine a future Democratic president using the TrumpRx precedent to force companies to adopt “their own ideological agenda.” That would be “a disaster for innovation and consumer choice.”

For Americans forced to pay out of pocket, “any price cut is welcome,” said Lisa Jarvis in Bloomberg. And getting Medicare to cover obesity drugs, even in a limited way, “is a positive step toward acknowledging and treating obesity as a disease,” not a lifestyle choice. But even $149 a month, the advertised price for a starting dose of a still-in-development GLP-1 pill on TrumpRx, will be too big a burden for the many Americans “struggling to afford groceries.” For now, it’s too early to tell whether this deal “will actually change people’s lives” or whether the balance of benefits will ultimately favor Big Pharma or patients and taxpayers.

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