According to Politico, President Trump's promise to make expensive new weight-loss drugs widely available to low-income Americans has not been fulfilled. Last year, Trump promised that states participating in his government's direct-to-consumer pricing program would soon have access to GLP-1 drugs, such as Wegovy and Zepbound, for obese Medicaid patients. However, nine months later, access to these drugs for Medicaid patients has been reduced. Currently, only Indiana has publicly expressed support for the program. Some states have stopped reimbursing Medicaid patients needing to lose weight for these drugs, while others are considering terminating the program. Most states interviewed indicated they would not participate. States that opted out, including Maine, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, cited budgetary pressures and concerns about the long-term financial sustainability of Trump's model. Meanwhile, they have also seen other states spending hundreds of millions of dollars more on these drugs than expected.
