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

WASHINGTON — Starting next month, Medicare will offer weight loss medications to adults aged 65 and older for the first time, under a government initiative designed to be temporary. The program, however, might prove challenging to discontinue.

Due to legal restrictions, Medicare is not allowed to fund obesity medications. The Trump administration is bypassing this restriction by introducing the drugs through a demonstration program.

Medicare initially aimed to encourage private Medicare insurers to voluntarily include these drugs in their coverage through a three-year initiative named BALANCE, which was set to begin after a brief transitional phase. However, insurers were resistant, prompting the federal government to prolong the transitional coverage program, known as Bridge, until the end of the next year.