{"id":156746,"date":"2025-11-27T18:49:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-27T18:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/156746\/"},"modified":"2025-11-27T18:49:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T18:49:09","slug":"uncommon-knowledge-trump-has-biden-to-thank-for-274-ozempic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/156746\/","title":{"rendered":"Uncommon Knowledge: Trump Has Biden to Thank for $274 Ozempic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Early in November, the White House brought drug-company chiefs into the East Room, and President Donald Trump\u2014never one for euphemism\u2014talked about cutting the cost of what he called the \u201cso-called fat drug.\u201d Just two weeks later, his administration said Medicare had secured lower prices<\/a> on several costly medicines\u2014including $274 for Ozempic and Wegovy\u2014with savings touted in the billions. But there is a twist beneath Trump’s triumphalism\u2014the power to make the cuts comes from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022, which was passed by Democrats and signed into law by then President Joe Biden. One number explains why semaglutide (the medication used in the drugs) has become the third rail of health-policy math: Ozempic alone accounted<\/a> for 2 percent of all Medicare Part D spending in 2022, before Medicare could negotiate a cent.<\/p>\n

Common Knowledge<\/p>\n

Republicans say the reduced prices are what hard-nosed bargaining looks like. The Trump administration\u2019s own fact sheet boasts that \u201cthe Medicare prices of Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound will be $245,\u201d and frames the deal<\/a> as dramatically cheaper than previous proposals. \u201cLower prices,\u201d the document declares, will let Medicare and Medicaid cover anti-obesity drugs \u201cat a dramatically lower cost to taxpayers.\u201d Trump has hammered the point in plain language: Ozempic \u201ccosts too much\u2026it\u2019s very unfair.\u201d And his Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is crowing about the second-year haul: $12 billion in federal savings from negotiations covering 15 drugs used by 5.3 million beneficiaries, with individual price cuts \u201cup to 71%.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democrats have answered that the bargaining leverage didn’t come from the Oval Office\u2014it came from their law. When the Department of Health and Human Services added Ozempic and Wegovy to the 2025 negotiation list, Democratic Senator Ron Wyden needled the GOP, saying, \u201cDonald Trump spent his first four years\u2026talking a big game about standing up to Big Pharma with nothing to show for it.\u201d As the new prices neared, Wyden and Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warned the White House to stop \u201cbait-and-switch affordability\u201d and simply release the negotiated numbers produced by the IRA.<\/p>\n

Outside Washington, the AARP cheered<\/a> the announcement as \u201crelief from high drug prices\u201d for seniors\u2014while pharmaceutical company\u2019s have sued over the 2022 law.<\/p>\n

Uncommon Knowledge<\/p>\n

Strip away the victory laps, and three facts matter.<\/p>\n

First\u2014the timeline reality. The 15-drug tranche that includes Ozempic and Wegovy stems from CMS\u2019 January selection under the IRA; companies and CMS have spent 2025 negotiating \u201cmaximum fair prices.\u201d Those negotiated prices must be finalized by late 2025 and take effect on January 1, 2027. That lag matters because today\u2019s claims are tomorrow\u2019s cuts. The administration\u2019s separate GLP-1 \u201cdeal\u201d promises interim relief for Medicare and Medicaid patients sooner, but the statutory negotiation program is what locks in durable, national prices. Think of the White House bargain as a bridge\u2014and the IRA schedule as the concrete.<\/p>\n

Second\u2014the GLP-1 shock. Why do politicians obsess over semaglutide? Because it\u2019s already bending Medicare\u2019s cost curve. KFF estimates 3.6 million Medicare enrollees could now be eligible for Wegovy coverage thanks to its 2024 cardiovascular-risk indication. The IRA helps by letting CMS negotiate across all semaglutide formulations (shot, pill; diabetes or heart-risk label) as one product, reducing gamesmanship across brands (which include Ozempic, Wegovy and Rybelsus)\u2014a quietly crucial design choice.<\/p>\n

Third\u2014the numbers under the numbers. The government\u2019s savings tallies differ because they measure different things. CMS emphasizes<\/a> $12 billion in gross federal savings if 2027 prices were applied to a recent year\u2019s use; officials peg net savings closer to $8 billion after Part D changes. According to the Associated Press, the second round\u2019s cut comes out to roughly 36 percent if retrofitted to past spending. The program\u2019s scope is clear: 15 drugs this year affecting around 5.3 million beneficiaries, with drug-level reductions in the dozens of percent.<\/p>\n

There are too legal footnotes. One, the courts have started swatting away some industry challenges to the negotiation program, though litigation persists and could yet reshape pieces of it. Two, because semaglutide is now explicitly inside Medicare\u2019s bargaining tent, the political incentive to expand coverage for anti-obesity use has grown\u2014exactly as analysts predicted when Wegovy picked up a heart-risk indication and CMS cracked the door to limited coverage. Coverage plus negotiation is the policy combo.<\/p>\n

Whatever you think of the the drugs in question, Trump has Biden to thank for the fiscal center of gravity moving.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re enjoying Uncommon Knowledge, please share. If you have suggestions for future editions or feedback, email subscriber.feedback@newsweek.com<\/a>. We want to hear your voice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Early in November, the White House brought drug-company chiefs into the East Room, and President Donald Trump\u2014never one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[65,103712,134,2444,12551,524,111,139,69,7014,103711],"class_list":{"0":"post-156746","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-medication","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-for-members","10":"tag-health","11":"tag-joe-biden","12":"tag-medicare","13":"tag-medication","14":"tag-new-zealand","15":"tag-newzealand","16":"tag-nz","17":"tag-ozempic","18":"tag-uncommon-knowledge"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}