Ozempic for all — Trump the deal-maker aims to make America slim again

Americans are going to get a little healthier. 

President Donald Trump this week cut deals with the drug-makers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk to increase access to obesity drugs in a major benefit to American public health. 

The agreements are a win-win-win — good for consumers, good for the companies and good for Trump. 

One of the most irrational superstitions of our time is that Big Pharma, which has for decades been routinely delivering near-miraculous therapeutics to extend and improve our lives, is a public enemy.

Its latest breakthrough is a class of so-called GLP-1 drugs that make it easier to lose weight, and to avoid associated serious health problems from Type 2 diabetes to heart disease. 

The basic dynamic of the Trump deals is that the companies will, through lower prices, expend their market share, thus generating more revenue.

The companies also get tariff relief and expedited review for select drugs.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the MAHA leader with a paranoid streak about modern medical advances, has been hostile to GLP-1 drugs, the most famous of which is Ozempic, sold by Novo Nordisk. 

If everyone could do as many push-ups and pull-ups as the hyper-fit 71-year-old Kennedy, perhaps we could turn our backs on GLP-1’s. 

Certainly, the secretary is correct that Americans should eat better and work out more.

But our body mass index has been increasing for about 150 years, as we’ve made calories cheaper and more abundant over time.

As it happens, the things we like to eat or drink that are bad for us — fast food, soda, chips, cookies — are cheap, convenient and taste good. 

Even if we manage to convince people that they should eat more vegetables and legumes, while getting appropriate levels of exercise, not everyone is going to do it as a matter of lifestyle constraints, individual preference or simple lack of willpower.

There’s also the fact that once you put on weight, physiological changes make it more difficult to shed it.

About 40% of Americans are obese.

Wouldn’t it be great for them — and for American society at large — if there were a safe, relatively convenient way for them to slim down?

Lo and behold, here they are.

The GLP-1’s started out as a treatment for diabetes and have exploded in popularity as weight-loss drugs. 

Trump’s reflex to make it easier for people to obtain Ozempic and the like — while, not incidentally, boosting his reputation as the nation’s foremost deal-maker — is the correct one.

Drug pricing is complicated, but by expanding the sale of the drugs direct to consumers, the companies can reduce prices.

Meanwhile, Medicare will do more to cover the drugs, also bringing down their cost. 

Already, an estimated 12% of Americans have used a GLP-1 drug at some point, an enormous increase in a short period of time.

That number will keep growing — especially if prices go down, if more oral GLP-1’s come online in addition to the injectables and if other benefits of the drugs emerge.

GLP-1s easily could match the extensive saturation level of statins, the cholesterol-reducing drugs. 

By all means, we should all eat more arugula.

Until then, we have a way to alleviate an ongoing health crisis — and President Trump and the drug companies are to be congratulated for creative cooperation in working to make it available to more Americans.

X: @RichLowry