CBO hints that Medicare may soon cover obesity drugs for their cardiovascular benefits

Medicare is star­ing down tens of bil­lions of dol­lars in fu­ture ex­pens­es if it be­gins cov­er­ing obe­si­ty drugs like No­vo Nordisk’s We­govy and Eli Lil­ly’s Zep­bound, and the Con­gres­sion­al Bud­get Of­fice has sug­gest­ed that may be soon, thanks to the heart ben­e­fits seen in pa­tients tak­ing We­govy.

In writ­ten ques­tions, Rep. Bud­dy Carter (R-GA) asked the CBO how it is con­sid­er­ing the costs of GLP-1s like We­govy and Zep­bound now that the FDA ex­pand­ed the la­bel for No­vo’s drug to in­clude car­dio­vas­cu­lar risk re­duc­tion ben­e­fits.

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