GOP Rep. Wants to Cut Waistlines—and the U.S. Budget—With Ozempic

Conservative Rep. Dave Schweikert (R-AZ) has long wanted to tighten the U.S. government’s belt. But now, he has a novel idea on how to reduce the deficit: tightening the belts of Americans through Ozempic.

Schweikert wants to expand access to medications that have been shown to assist weight loss, with the rationale that these drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Saxenda—known in the pharmaceutical world as “GLP-1 receptor agonists”—could improve health outcomes for Americans and therefore decrease long term health care costs.

“Next year, one of the GLP-1s, the Ozempics, goes off patent,” Schweikert said during a presentation to Four Peaks Young Republicans. “The price is gonna crash. What would happen if you took morbidly obese populations on Medicare, Medicaid, Indian Health Services, the VA and gave them access to it?”

Read more at The Daily Beast.