New medications like Wegovy are changing the way people lose weight and manage obesity, but many Medicaid beneficiaries can't get them.
Medicaid plans aren't required to cover Wegovy for weight loss and obesity, but some do and others are considering adding it for those uses.
"Still, I'm not doing well," says McCullough, a semiretired school bus driver in Colorado."I have done nutrition counseling, trauma counseling, meditation, positive affirmation therapy, and still I am almost 300 pounds again and sad and unhappy."But she and her husband found themselves on Medicaid for the first time last year. Colorado's Medicaid plan won't cover Wegovy for her, an obesity medicine made by Novo Nordisk that she'd like to try.
McCullough is frustrated."I'm not ashamed of the fact that I am on state assistance, and I can say that what assistance they provide is not adequate, especially if you do have obesity," McCullough says., says when the law excluding weight-related drugs was passed in the 1990s, everyone thought diet and exercise were the key to losing weight and keeping it off — even though the evidence doesn't support that.
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