Big Brother
Trump Strikes Deal to Offer Americans GLP-1 Drugs for Much Cheaper
Talk about government intervention.
By Joe Wilkins
Published Nov 6, 2025 2:22 PM EST
With Donald Trump reaping his lowest approval rating of all-time, it’s only natural he’d scramble to throw voters a bone.
Apparently, that came in the form of a huge government-mediated discount on the blockbuster weight loss drugs known as GLP-1s, like Wegovy and Zepbound.
As reported by the Washington Post prior to the event, Trump announced the pharmaceutical giants Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk will lower the price of their weight-loss drugs for some patients on Medicare and Medicaid.
In an Oval Office press conference, Trump called the deal a “triumph for American patients that will save lives and improve the health of millions and millions of Americans.” The companies have reportedly agreed to lower the price of their notoriously expensive suite of weight-loss GLP-1 drugs, likely as a result of pressure from the Medicare and Medicaid innovation center (CMS).
(The optics of the event could have been better; partway through, a Novo executive named Gordon Findlay collapsed and slumped to the floor. The event restarted soon afterward.)
In August, the CMS had proposed an experimental coverage overhaul, which would have allowed state Medicaid and Medicare Part D insurance plans to opt in on weight loss drug coverage, WaPo reported at the time. This announcement could be a spinoff of that experiment, though some crucial details about Trump’s deal remain unanswered.
By mid-2026, WaPo reports, Eli and Novo will start selling doses of their weight-loss drugs to Medicare for a minimum of $149 and a maximum of $245. As the paper notes, patient co-pays for weight-loss treatment are expected to hover around $50 a month on the plans.
There’s a catch, however: based on what we know, only around 10 percent of Medicare beneficiaries would be eligible for the new pricing plan, based on preexisting conditions and body mass index.
Trump is also bootstrapping his own government-run drug enterprise, “TrumpRx.gov.” When it goes live next year, WaPo reports the service would sell the drugs directly to consumers for around $350 a month.
It’s a startlingly generous public health move from the president, whose own conservative policies have made health insurance, SSRIs, and weight loss drugs prohibitively more expensive for US citizens. Still, mid-2026 is a long way off — and, cynical observers might point out, comes immediately before what are expected to be contentious midterm elections.
More on Trump: President Trump Posts AI Video of Himself Spraying Explosive Diarrhea on Peaceful Protestors
Joe Wilkins
Correspondent
I’m a tech and transit correspondent for Futurism, where my beat includes transportation, infrastructure, and the role of emerging technologies in governance, surveillance, and labor.
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