Medicare’s temporary weight-loss drug plan may be hard to end

WASHINGTON — Weight reduction medicine can be accessible to adults 65 and older in Medicare for the primary time subsequent month, because of a authorities program that’s speculated to be momentary. It could be tough to finish it.

Medicare is prohibited by regulation from paying for weight problems medicine. The Trump administration is circumventing that regulation by making the medicine accessible by way of an indication program.

Initially, Medicare had hoped to push non-public Medicare insurers to voluntarily cowl the medicine by way of a three-year program known as BALANCE, which might have began following a brief transitional interval. However insurers balked, so the federal authorities is as a substitute extending the transitional protection program, known as Bridge, till the top of subsequent 12 months.