Last-minute effort to rob taxpayers: Biden administration moves to subsidize reptile venom peptide injections marketed as weight loss medications
12/04/2024 / By Belle Carter
Outgoing President Joe Biden’s administration wants to scoop more money out of taxpayers’ pockets before his term ends, with a proposal to expand coverage of Big Pharma’s popular venom peptide-laced weight-loss injections in government-backed healthcare plans including Medicare and Medicaid.
The proposal, which was pitched by the administration on Nov. 26, would expand access to weekly injectables Ozempic and Wegovy from Novo Nordisk and Mounjaro, and Zepbound from Eli Lilly. (Related: Ozempic and Wegovy weight loss drugs are injectable LIZARD VENOM PEPTIDES that may unleash a devastating wave of organ failure… side effects align with symptoms of SNAKE BITES.)
Current rules limit weight-loss drugs from being covered by government programs so Biden’s proposal would classify the said drugs as medications to treat obesity, with the reasoning that the health condition can cause ailments like diabetes and heart disease, which are covered under the rules. It also aims to reclassify the drugs as treatment for a “chronic disease” rather than just weight loss medications.
“The medical community today agrees that obesity is a chronic disease,” Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure told reporters. “These drugs are the beginning of a revolution in the way that weight is controlled.”
The proposal also argued that the change would dramatically reduce out-of-pocket costs. A month’s supply of weight loss drugs can cost $1,000, a White House official estimated.
Government officials further disclosed that the federal government will pick up the majority of the cost, which is about $25 billion for Medicare and $11 billion for Medicaid over 10 years. States will need to pay about $3.8 billion.
“The Inflation Reduction Act [IRA] has made historic strides in reducing the cost of prescriptions for our nation’s seniors and those on Medicare, including a $2,000 out-of-pocket cap and the IRA premium stabilization policies,” CMS Deputy Administrator Dr. Meena Seshamani said on a call.
The proposal would require a 60-day public comment period before it can go into effect. President-elect Donald would have assumed office by then.
Analysts point out that the incoming Trump administration will decide whether or not to push through with the proposal, given that health activist and environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.) hasn’t been so keen on this class of drugs. RFK Jr. has been nominated by Trump to head the Department of Health and Human Services come January 2025.
In speeches and on social media, Kennedy said the U.S. shouldn’t cover the drugs through Medicaid or Medicare. Instead, he supports a broad expansion of coverage for healthier foods and gym memberships.
“For half the price of Ozempic, we could purchase regeneratively raised, organic food for every American, three meals a day and a gym membership, for every obese American,” Kennedy said to a group of federal lawmakers during a roundtable earlier this year.
Ozempic and Wegovy may shrink the heart, research indicates
The Biden administration may be placing millions of Americans’ hearts at risk with their proposal to expand access to Ozempic and Wegony as a recent study published in The Lancet found that long-term side effects of the medication include a shrinking effect on the heart.
The popular anti-obesity drugs may be showing incredible short-term benefits, from boosted metabolic health to pain relief to addiction and cognitive health, but some experts have raised concerns these glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonists could be causing significant skeletal muscle loss as well as fat loss.
For 21 days, researchers at the University of Alberta in Canada administered semaglutide, the active ingredient in Ozempic, to both lean and obese mice without diabetes or cardiac dysfunction. The obese mice lost about 30 percent of their body weight and 65 percent of their fat mass compared to untreated mice.
Among lean mice that were treated with semaglutide, they experienced roughly an eight percent reduction in skeletal muscle over three weeks.
While there were no observed changes to heart function or the thickness of heart walls, both groups of mice treated with semaglutide showed decreases in overall heart mass and the individual size of their heart muscle cells.
To explore further, the team led by clinical scientist Matthew Martens, turned to human cells. In the lab, when human cardiac muscle cells were treated with semaglutide, they showed significant reductions in size.
Given these results, the authors admit it is tempting to speculate that semaglutide is responsible for cardiac shrinkage and atrophy. “However,” they note, “we do not observe any changes in recognized markers of atrophy.”
Nevertheless, the findings among mice and human cells suggest that semaglutide “has the potential to be detrimental in the long term” to heart muscles.
“We suggest that cardiac structure and function be carefully evaluated in previous and ongoing clinical studies,” Martens and his colleagues concluded.
The call to action is supported by another recent paper, published in a journal run by the American Heart Association, whose authors argue the effects of GLP-1 agonists on muscle health should be studied in a “more objective and comprehensive” way, especially given “the substantial numbers of patients who will likely be taking these medications well into the future.”
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