An Arizona republican has come up with a new plan for cutting the fat from budgets. Cutting the fat from people, what? That's right, area representative David Schweikert to you wants Arizona to start providing the weight loss drug Ozempic to [00:00:17] people who receive public health assistance. This is what he said. He said next year one of the GLP ones diozempics go off patent. Schweikert said during a presentation to the Four Peaks Young Republicans, the price is going to crash. [00:00:33] What would happen if you took morbidly obese populations on Medicare, Medicaid, Indian Health Services, the VA, and gave them access to it? Then he said, in case you were gonna say this, it's not fat shaming, it's fat loving, schweikert said, [00:00:49] we can love our brothers and sisters back to health, okay? Hold that thought cuz there's a lot of health consequences of Ozempic. Okay, so if you don't know Ozempic, you're obviously not an a lister in Hollywood. [00:01:05] No, it has just gone. It's made the rounds. Influencers are hawking it, Hollywood celebrities swear they're not on it. They secretly are on it. And social media users tout the drugs as weight loss marvels. But experts have warned that ozempic side effects, which include malnutrition and [00:01:22] gastrointestinal problems, aren't as pleasant as Ozempic's obsessives may present. Little is known about the long term impact of the drug and other GLP ones. Again, it was developed for a purpose. It was developed to help people who were at severe risk because of their weight. [00:01:39] It was first developed and the FDA approved it as a type two diabetes medication. Commercials for the medication was used to tout those taking the drug could experience some weight loss. And it didn't take long for doctors, however, to start prescribing Ozempic as an off label weight loss medication. [00:01:55] Another GLP, one Wegovi, has the same active ingredient as Ozempic and was FDA approved for chronic weight management for adults who are overweight. And yes, Elon Musk admitted to taking Wagovi. That's right, he did. You could look it up. [00:02:11] That being said, a lot, of course, private insurers are not covering Ozempic, so it's hard for people to get access to it. Medicare can cover medications for type two diabetes, but due to a 2003 law, the program can't cover drugs specifically used for weight loss. So seems like a little bit of a bureaucratic thing. [00:02:28] The problem is, what the hell? Is this actually going to help? Would it even help? Well, apparently, according to the Arizona joint economic committee, of which Schweikert is the vice chair, spending on obesity is huge. Committee economists project that between 2024 and 2023, [00:02:48] government spending on obesity and obesity related diseases will amount to $4.1 trillion, which is just half a day of supporting wars in Gaza anyway. However, federally, the congressional budget office was like, [00:03:04] no, this is not the way. They said it's not gonna make a dent. They said the budgetary effect of Medicare covering anti-obesity medications would depend on drug costs at the time. At current prices, which could come over a month, the CBO assessed that Medicare coverage of drugs like Ozempic for weight loss would, [00:03:22] quote, increase overall federal spending. But we'd all walk a red carpet and be starving ourselves, what? I don't know, this is so funny to me. It seems like any way they can blame people and they poor shame people, [00:03:41] they job shame people if they can't get jobs. And then this is like, just go on a weight loss drug. Never mind that we could not cut food stamps so you could get healthy foods and access to fruit, veggies and not just bread and cheaper things like that, right? [00:04:02] To say nothing of the fact that it's big pharma that's in the way here. And the congressional budget office is like, yeah, no, you'd still have to pay tons of money to big pharma even for these off patent drugs. >> Speaker 2: Look, I want everybody to be as sexy as our betters in Hollywood. [00:04:20] I want everybody to be that sexy. >> Speaker 3: That being mean, [LAUGH] I think like you said, we should encourage people to be eating better food. I wish we could regulate the hell out of the quote unquote food industry. [00:04:36] And the food like products that they're selling us in grocery stores and their tricky ass tactics of calling things whole grain and organic when it's not. >> Speaker 2: It's just processed to crap. All these additives and preservatives if we just weren't eating so much crap. [00:04:53] If you ever leave America, the food everywhere literally tastes different. Like chicken just tastes different. Beef just tastes different in these other places because they're not being poisoned by these powerful ass food corporations. [00:05:10] Man, I think if we could address some of those root causes, we wouldn't have to drug people into looking like Kate moss. >> Speaker 1: Right, but it's so late stage capitalists to think this way. Like, hey, if people are just malnourished, [00:05:30] they won't need to buy food. >> Speaker 2: No, Finn, they're just less greedy. They just want to eat every time they see something they just shove in their freaking faces. >> Speaker 1: They're just so greedy. >> Speaker 1: Do you really need all those 2000 calories a day, wow, >> Speaker 2: You had to get the ten piece [00:05:48] from wingstop when a five would have did did just fine. It's their fault, friend. >> Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's so wild to me. But it is truly like that's what's going to happen when we're on our snowpiercer train in the apocalypse. They're going to be like, keep the ozempic going for the pores in the back so [00:06:07] they don't eat as much so we can keep it's. So creepy.