For decades, the cost and accessibility of healthcare has been a major issue in federal elections. This year’s race for the White House is no different, with former President Trump and Vice President Harris adopting divergent approaches to earning the votes of Americans with genuine concerns about their ability to access needed care.
New to this conversation is a genuine breakthrough in dealing with several chronic conditions related to obesity. These rapidly growing medications, Ozempic and its near-twin Wegovy prescribed for weight loss, have gained an exceptional level of media and public attention, including an acknowledgment by uber-celebrity Oprah Winfrey that these compounds prompted her remarkable weight loss.
Known as Glucagon-like peptide (GLP) inhibitors, these drugs are improving the overall health of millions of Americans, who fully grasp their significance and effectiveness. A survey my organization conducted among voters in battleground states found a full two-thirds (66%) are more likely to support Congressional candidates who favor anti-obesity medications being covered by Medicare. The public may wonder why, if federal employees already receive coverage for these medications, the taxpayers who underwrite their salaries do not.
GLPs hold the promise of being the greatest advance in reducing obesity-related ailments, which would be key to reducing healthcare costs as our nation’s population ages. Data indicates that 90% of America's healthcare costs are attributable to chronic conditions and mental health, and obesity is directly linked to those afflictions. As the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) noted in naming GLP-1 drugs as their 2023 Breakthrough of the Year, "... a new class of therapies is breaking the mold, and there's a groundswell of hope that they may dent rates of obesity and interlinked chronic diseases."
Despite this, some politicians, like Vice President Harris and socialist Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, are advocating for policies that would negatively affect the availability of these drugs and have a chilling effect on the development of new health-inducing treatments.
Americans are right to be skeptical about the approach taken by Harris and Sanders. The Biden-Harris Administration took a long victory lap over the passage of their cynically named “Inflation Reduction Act” (IRA) and its features they claimed would lower healthcare costs. But, costs, premiums, and out-of-pocket expenses continue to climb. The absence of the IRA’s success has not deterred Harris from continuing to chime in on rising healthcare costs. In fact, she wants to double-down on the IRA and expand price-fixing negotiations for up to 50 drugs per year.
This strategy is consistent with Harris’s short-lived campaign for President in 2019, when, explaining how she would force private pharmaceutical companies to accept her price caps, said, "I will snatch their patent, so that we will take over." In this context, the “we” to which she refers is the government under Democrat control.
Through the IRA, Biden-Harris intentionally pushed costs to private insurers, who will undoubtedly be forced to ration care. Instead of disincentivizing the use of life-saving classes of medications like GLPs, the Administration should focus on expanding Medicare and private plan eligibility for these and other beneficial cost-saving medications.
Heart disease, for which obesity is a major contributing factor, remains the leading killer of adults in the United States. Strokes and diabetes, which also correlate strongly to obesity, are the fifth and eighth leading causes. There are further links between obesity and other deadly ailments, such as liver disease, kidney disease, some types of cancer, and even dementia. Cardiovascular diseases alone cost our nation $400 billion annually in healthcare costs and lost productivity, an amount projected to explode in the decades ahead.
Medicare needs to take a page from government and private plans, realize the potential long-term savings GLPs represent, and get onboard offering coverage. Considering the record of the current Administration and the rhetoric currently being employed by Vice President Harris, one would reasonably conclude they don’t care about the financial and human costs associated with these afflictions.
There is no denying that GLPs are helping a growing number of Americans shed pounds while offering hope for stemming our nation’s exploding increase of cardiovascular disease. In November, voters have a chance to vote with their heart, in more ways than one.