Though President Donald Trump criticized the price of medications like Ozempic known for weight loss, he also said Monday that he doesn’t think they work well.
“I call it the ‘fat pill’ or the ‘fat drug,’” said Trump of Ozempic during a press conference mostly focused on announcements focused on autism. “Sometimes it works, I guess, for people. The ones I’ve seen, it hasn’t worked so well. I’ve got a lot of friends, their fat… they say: ‘Yeah, I lost some weight,’ I say: ‘You don’t look it to me.’”
Ozempic is a glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) drug. This type of drug, which also includes Wegovy, works by increasing the amount of insulin the body makes, Dr. Diana Thiara, an internist at UCSF Health and director of the UCSF Medical Weight Management Program, explained to Audacy in 2023. Additionally, they decrease gastric emptying, making people who take them feel full sooner than they otherwise would.
Elon Musk, a close ally of Trump’s prior to their public falling out earlier this year, touted the weight loss benefits of Wegovy on X back in 2022. Over the years, the medications – which were first approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to help diabetes patients, have become popular for weight loss. Research published by RAND in August shows that that 12% of Americans have already used GLP-1 drugs for weight loss.
According to Columbia Surgery, “Ozempic and similar drugs now yield an average weight loss of 15 to 20%, significantly higher than previous options. About one-third experience around 10 percent loss of body weight.”
Even though Trump apparently hasn’t been impressed by the effect of Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs in his friends, he’s still working to bring down prices.
Audacy previously reported that a month’s supply of these could cost between $900 and $1,300 out-of-pocket. In May, we covered discussion regarding whether the drugs should be covered by Medicare and Medicaid with help from Dr. Anand Parekh of the Bipartisan Policy Center.
“They pay $1,300, $1,200 and they go to London and they pay $88,” said Trump. “And they call me, they go: ‘What’s this all about?’ We’re subsidizing the rest of the world. Stupidly.”
Trump signed an executive order in May announcing actions geared at lowering the cost of prescription drugs in the U.S. Earlier this year, GoodRx also announced a partnership with Novo Nordisk – the company behind Ozempic and Wegovy – to offer the drugs at nearly half price for self-paying patients, available through more than 70,000 retail pharmacies.