STAT+: Trump’s obesity drug plan creates a temporary Medicare program that may be hard to end

Article excerpt

Starting next month, Medicare will cover weight-loss drugs for seniors 65 and older through a demonstration program, a first that circumvents a federal law explicitly prohibiting Medicare from paying for obesity medications. The Trump administration created this temporary workaround, but once established, such programs often prove politically difficult to dismantle. Medicare initially hoped private insurers would voluntarily cover the drugs, but that approach stalled, leaving the government to establish the bridge program instead.