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Posted on 12/12/2024 10:33:25 AM PST by Red Badger
Elon Musk, who is spearheading President-elect Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, is touting GLP-1 drugs to treat obesity.
“Nothing would do more to improve the health, lifespan and quality of life for Americans than making GLP inhibitors [sic] super low cost to the public,” Musk wrote in a post on X Wednesday. “Nothing else is even close.”
Musk’s comments come just two weeks after the Biden administration made an 11th-hour push to require Medicare and state Medicaid programs to cover obesity drugs. The administration is proposing to reinterpret a 2003 law banning Medicare from covering popular GLP-1s directly for weight loss to do so.
The Biden administration’s proposal comes as the treatments can often be out of reach for consumers due to their cost, lack of insurance coverage and drug shortages. Congress is weighing legislation to lift the ban, which would dramatically expand access to the drugs but also would likely cost tens of billions of dollars.
Musk is leading the “DOGE” effort along with biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, and has pledged to cut trillions in federal spending. Congressional Republicans have said it’s too early to lay claim to top priorities or cost-cutting moves, but a DOGE framework has started to take shape.
It’s not clear how Musk would make GLP-1s “super low cost.” The drugs are expected to be eligible for Medicare price negotiation down the line, which could be one potential avenue to reduce their cost. The pharmaceutical industry and business interests have challenged in court the Inflation Reduction Act’s provisions establishing the price negotiations.
Still, Musk is pitching the drugs as a long-term cost saver.
“Vast majority of healthcare spending is near end of life and obesity often plays a major role,” Musk said in a July post on X. “GLP and other hunger inhibitors might be the single biggest positive effect on healthcare and quality of life in the 21st century.”
The Congressional Budget Office has said it doesn't have direct evidence showing that using GLP-1s for obesity reduces other health care spending.
Musk could have an ally in Trump’s pick to run CMS, Dr. Mehmet Oz, who has touted Novo Nordisk's Ozempic for weight loss. But Trump’s pick to run HHS, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has been skeptical of the drugs.
Kennedy has raised concerns about cost and said in a recent Fox News interview that pharmaceutical companies are “counting on selling it to Americans because we’re so stupid and so addicted to drugs.”
Clash of the Titans...
Already covered in another article and it was just as stupid then.
Promoting a drug that is new with little known about long term effects that is now being reported as having significant long term if not even possibly permanent effect is ignorant and incredibly irresponsible.
Musk is right. Most of America’s known health issues are related to obesity - and that’s not counting the number of issues that might be related to obesity. Useless, decades-long lectures about diet and exercise have not done a single thing to change the fact that America is now the most obese nation in the world and most likely in human history. The most effective way to drive down the cost of health care would be to make these new weight loss drugs affordable for anyone who needs them.
Willpower, self control, exercise, diet.
Let’s not get carried away.
Not true, Elon.
Eating better and getting more exercise and outside more would do wonders, as it has in the past.
Dumb. There are already heart concerns with one of these drugs.
He is full of shit! The drug is a double edge sword and will cause increased cost, as a result of additional treatment. He is a Conman.
…or weight loss drugs will kill you faster to keep the welfare grift state solvent
Your are absolutely correct.
What we need is a good old-fashioned famine!..............
He is right that many health issues could indeed be ameliorated by better access to these medications,
GLP-1 drugs can be dangerous!
I agree with you. Nobody wants to do the work yet everybody wants to lose the weight ( fat)
BINGO!!
The problem could be portion size. Raised in the 60’s and 70’s, I remember the size of a hamburger when eating out. It was small. The fries were also small. Milkshake? small.
Then the 90’s hit and more people started eating fast food. Portion size doubled. Double and triple meat, fries as large as you wanted and mega soft drink cups. Then the sugar went away and HFCS (corn syrup) became the base sweetener.
These conditions added to the gluttony in our society.
I don't know anything about GLP, but do know something about weight loss. It could be beneficial for the obese, but if abused by people with a little extra padding it could cause problems.
When folks go on starvation diets (hunger suppression) it not only makes the body burn excess fat, but also burns muscle mass at the same time. That is the reason why so many entertainers who need to lose fat quickly for a role or gig, that they also look scrawny. I'm sure many here have notice some actors who go from normal size to sickly skinny for a role.
That is why I suggest such dramatic weight losses include some protein. If they've lost the taste or can't stomach solid foods, a couple cans of Insure or such liquid protein would keep muscle loss at a minimum.
OR...just skip the hi-indwx carbs and eat lean protein. There is sound proof that the Atkins or Keto diets work! I've watched my wife go from close to obese to a shapely weight appropriate woman in just months with Atkins.
The best thing to do for health would be to excercise more and cut out all the sugar and crap.
However, most people don’t have the self-discipline to do that, so Ozempic is probably the better option if the only other one is to carry on being a lazy KFC Family Sized bucket eating fatso.
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