As Maine faces an impending half-billion dollar budget shortfall, and Gov. Janet Mills (D-Maine) considers a flurry of tax increases that would barely dent the deficit, legislative Democrats are aiming to expand welfare benefits to include weight-loss drugs like Ozempic.

Rep. Anne Graham (D-North Yarmouth), along with five Democratic co-sponsors, proposed LD 480, “An Act to Support Healthy Weight by Providing MaineCare Coverage for Certain Weight Loss Medications.”

The bill would allow anyone enrolled in taxpayer-funded MaineCare health benefits to receive subsidies for glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist drugs, such as Ozempic, designed to combat obesity.

The bill imposes almost no limits on the coverage, requiring only that the drug be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and that the welfare recipient must have a prescription.

Instead of promoting a healthier lifestyle as a means of combating obesity, Rep. Graham and her co-sponsors seem to prefer saddling down taxpayers with the cost of providing weight-loss drugs to welfare recipients.

The bill, set for consideration in the Legislative Committee on Health and Human Services, does not yet have a fiscal note indicating just how much it will cost taxpayers, though it is sure to add to an already overburdened welfare system.

According to Spring 2023 data, approximately 416,000 people were receiving MaineCare benefits, with 106,509 of those recipients only eligible under COVID-19 era temporary expansion enrollment policies.

If those expansion recipients are ruled out, that still leaves an approximate 309,491 enrollees.

Assuming that national weight data holds true for Maine, roughly 40 percent of those recipients would be obese, leaving approximately 123,796 MaineCare recipients who would potentially take Ozempic or some other weight-loss drug.

According to the manufacturer’s website, Ozempic costs $997 per month, meaning that if MaineCare covered the full cost of the drug for all of its obese recipients, it could cost taxpayers a hefty $1.48 billion every year.

Although that number assumes recipients would have no co-pay for the drug and that every obese recipient would take the drug, neither of which are assured, the actual cost would likely still weigh down the state’s deficit in a potentially massive way.

Gov. Mills has already proposed numerous tax increases, from increased tobacco taxes to taxes on streaming services, in order to deal with the budget. A significant expansion of MaineCare appears to be at cross-purposes with her efforts.

The Maine Wire reached out to the bill’s sponsor, asking whether she is concerned that her bill goes against the governor’s stated goal of creating a balanced budget, but she did not immediately respond.