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Millions of Medicare beneficiaries struggling with obesity could soon see the cost of weight-loss drugs plummet, as a new federal pilot program launching July 1 expands access to GLP-1 medications like Wegovy and Zepbound for eligible seniors.

Through a new trial called Medicare GLP-1 Bridge, the federal government is now offering a selection of the brand-name medications to certain Medicare and Medicare Advantage beneficiaries for $50 a month, The Associated Press reported.

The covered medications include drugmaker Eli Lilly’s Foundayo tablets and Zepbound KwikPens and Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy injections and tablets, all of which have been FDA-approved for weight loss, according to the report.

OZEMPIC USERS MAY BE MAKING A MAJOR WEIGHT-LOSS MISTAKE, NEW STUDY SUGGESTS

The temporary program is set to run until the end of 2027.

This is the first time GLP-1s (glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists) will be covered by insurance when used solely for weight loss.

Prior to this new Medicare pilot, seniors who wanted to access GLP-1s for obesity alone paid about $1,350-$1,650 per month for Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy (semaglutide) and about $1,086 monthly for Lilly’s Zepbound (tirzepatide). However, both manufacturers offered some cash-pay options that significantly reduced those prices for eligible patients.

GLP-1 WEIGHT LOSS DRUGS ARE RESHAPING THE BRIDAL INDUSTRY AS SHOPS RUSH ORDERS AND REQUIRE NEW WAIVERS

There are some parameters surrounding the coverage — older adults must have had a body mass index (BMI) of 35 or higher when they started GLP-1 therapy, or a BMI of 27 or higher alongside another health condition, such as a past heart attack or stroke or prediabetes.

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Those who already have insurance coverage for other diseases, such as diabetes and sleep apnea, are not eligible for the program.

There are more than 70 million Americans currently enrolled in Medicare, 10 million of whom are overweight or obese, according to Juliette Cubanski, vice president and director of the program on Medicare policy at the healthcare research nonprofit KFF.

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"For many older Americans living with obesity, this is a moment they and their families have been waiting for," Jamey Millar, Novo Nordisk’s executive vice president of U.S. operations, said in a press release.

"The Medicare GLP-1 Bridge program offers a new, affordable path to an FDA-approved treatment that was previously not covered."

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Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said he hopes the program can help his agency collect data to potentially work toward longer-term coverage, while providing immediate relief to cash-strapped older Americans, AP reported.

"The sheer cost of these medications is a huge barrier to access," he said in a call with reporters. "That ends today."

Oz told reporters that CMS plans to "carefully track participation and outcomes" to see whether an extension of the Bridge program or another solution is the best way to move forward. He told AP a federal law permanently allowing the coverage is "not essential right now" but something "for Congress to debate amongst themselves."

"We can’t decide what’s going to happen long term with Bridge until we see some of the data," he said, adding that there are ongoing talks with drug companies to lower costs.

One potential concern is that older patients tend to have more adverse effects to medication in general , according to Dr. Micah Eimer, a clinical assistant professor of cardiology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.

"Specifically, in our research, older patients on blood pressure medications were more likely to experience hypotensive side effects, such as fainting and dizziness, after starting a GLP-1," he said in a statement.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Three separate attacks involving petrol bombs and other improvised devices took place in Thessaloniki in the early hours of Wednesday.

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A man was seen clambering through a window to escape black smoke in the block where some 200 people live.

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Former President Barack Obama blamed a splintered media landscape for the lack of a second Obama-like political figure emerging on the national stage during an interview on Tuesday.

NBC "Today" co-host Craig Melvin talked to the former president about the new Obama Presidential Center in Chicago on his "Glass Half Full" podcast and told him, "You’ve always represented a lot of different communities, but there has always been this singularity to your story. Earlier this week, one of your former aides was talking on one of these cable shows and said Democrats should stop looking for Obama 2.0. Not gonna happen."

"Do you think in the current climate that someone like you with your background and your story, do you think that you could break through now the same way you did back in ’07, ’08?" Melvin asked Obama. 

"I do think it’s harder because of the nature of your business, the media, it’s more splintered," Obama said.

OBAMA CHOOSES SUPPORTER STEPHEN COLBERT FOR DEBUT INTERVIEW AT CONTROVERSIAL PRESIDENTIAL CENTER

"I hadn’t even been elected yet to the U.S. Senate," he continued. "I had won the primary. I’d won the nomination — Democratic nomination to be the senator of Illinois, but nobody really knew who I was except outside of Illinois. And when I gave that speech at the convention, suddenly I’m a national figure because all the networks covered it. And if you’re on the cover of Time magazine or Newsweek back then, suddenly everybody knows who you are because we all shared one culture."

Obama said that people "who are just as gifted or in some cases more gifted" than him were not breaking through because of a splintered media.

He suggested the country was in a transition period.

"So I think we’re in a transition period where there are a lot of Barack and Michelle Obamas out there doing cool stuff, but politics hasn’t quite given them the platform yet. Media hasn’t shined a spotlight on them yet. If we can help focus on the great work they’re doing, then that’s one of our core missions," he said.

OBAMA REMAINS DEM HEADLINER WHILE PRESIDENT WITH MOST VOTES EVER FADES INTO BACKGROUND: 'IT WAS ALL A DREAM'

Obama said during the dedication of his presidential center in Chicago earlier this month that America’s Founders fell "terribly short" of the Declaration of Independence’s promise, while casting the nation’s story as one of generations coming together to make the union "more perfect."

"The success of this experiment was never a given," Obama said in his speech, referring to the nation's founding ahead of America celebrating its 250th anniversary on the 4th of July.

"In forming our union, the founders fell terribly short of the Declaration's promise, leaving slavery intact, allowing states to restrict the franchise to white men who owned property," he said. "But in drafting a Constitution and a Bill of Rights, they did have the foresight, the genius, to provide us with a framework that allows each generation to make our union more perfect."

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The 44th president devoted much of his speech to outlining the work he believes America still has ahead, echoing themes he has emphasized in past appearances on the campaign trail and during his time in the White House.

Fox News' Ashley J. DiMella contributed to this report.

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Former San Jose State volleyball player Brooke Slusser called Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling in favor of states protecting women’s sports the "biggest win" female athletes have had yet.

Slusser appeared on Fox News’ "The Faulkner Focus" after the high court ruled 6-3 in favor of West Virginia and Idaho in two landmark transgender athlete cases. The ruling upheld state laws requiring student-athletes to compete on sports teams that correspond with their biological sex at birth rather than their gender identity.

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For Slusser, who became one of the most prominent voices in the fight to protect women’s sports after speaking out about a transgender player on her volleyball team in 2024, the decision was deeply personal.

"I mean, it’s amazing," Slusser told Harris Faulkner. "It’s the biggest win we’ve had yet, so I couldn’t be happier. We couldn’t ask for more right now."

Slusser filed a lawsuit last year over her experience at SJSU, where she said she was not told that teammate Blaire Fleming was transgender despite sharing team spaces, including hotel rooms, locker rooms and living quarters.

"I found out from other student-athletes at the university, so it wasn’t even the institution itself that informed us, which makes it even worse," Slusser said. "My whole team had to find out on their own through other student-athletes."

Slusser said the issue was not limited to competition. She argued that female athletes were deprived of the ability to make informed decisions about their own privacy and comfort in intimate spaces.

"It’s taking away the student-athlete’s choice to choose which safe spaces they’re in," she said. "You’re going into locker rooms, or for my situation, my living space, and being told these are all women, thinking I’m comfortable doing whatever I need to be doing, changing and getting dressed where I want to. And then I found out the whole time that I’ve been sharing hotel rooms, locker rooms, my living space with a man."

Slusser continued, "They’re stripping me of my choice to basically choose where I want to get ready and who I am getting ready around. That’s the biggest issue. It’s not even just about safety in the sport as well, it’s about everything else that goes into it."

SUPREME COURT MAKES RULING ON TRANS ATHLETES IN WOMEN'S SPORTS

The SJSU volleyball controversy became one of the most high-profile examples in the debate over trans-identifying athletes in women’s sports. Multiple Mountain West teams forfeited matches against San Jose State during that season amid concerns about Fleming’s participation.

Slusser told Faulkner that even as Fleming’s teammate, she still had concerns about the physical differences in practice.

"I just had to practice with him. I wasn’t even playing against him in a real game," Slusser said. "So the bare minimum, at least I got to know his tendencies so I could keep myself a little bit safer. But even then, I’m still getting slammed in my body. I had bruises on my legs from getting hit with a ball."

She added that opponents were put in an even worse position because they didn’t have the same familiarity before stepping on the court.

"These other teams don’t know what they’re walking into," Slusser said. "That’s even worse than what I had to go through going into practice every single day, trying to keep myself safe."

The Supreme Court’s ruling in West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox gives states the authority to maintain separate women’s and girls’ sports categories based on biological sex. The decision is a major victory for advocates who have argued that Title IX was designed to protect female athletes, not force them to compete against biological males.

Slusser said San Jose State failed its female athletes by prioritizing Fleming over the rest of the roster.

"The fact that they allowed these student-athletes that were men pretending to be women be protected under those Title IX rules that were meant for women to be protected in is the biggest fault that happened," Slusser said. "My institution itself, SJSU, they decided to protect a man and not worry about the 18 other women that should have been protected as well."

Slusser also referenced former high school volleyball player Payton McNabb, who suffered serious injuries after being hit in the face by a spike from a transgender opponent in 2022.

"This could ruin people’s lives, not even just in athletics, but overall," Slusser said. "Payton McNabb will never be the same from what happened to her, and that’s what we’re trying to stop."

For Slusser and other women who have fought this battle publicly, Tuesday’s ruling marks a legal victory that’s been a long time coming.

And for the states that passed laws protecting women’s sports, the Supreme Court has now made clear they have the constitutional authority to enforce them.

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EXCLUSIVE: Federal immigration authorities arrested more than a dozen illegal immigrants with criminal histories over the weekend, many of whom had convictions for charges including homicide, rape, child sex crimes, and drug trafficking.

The 15 arrests came as the Trump administration continues to ramp up its deportation agenda through sweeping interior enforcement, while simultaneously removing protections for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants and drastically expanding detention capacity.

"Over the weekend, while Americans attended the Great American State Fair and enjoyed their summer weekends, the men and women of ICE were hard at work arresting criminal illegal aliens convicted of homicide, child sexual abuse, assault, rape, and drug trafficking," said Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis. "Under President Trump and Secretary Mullin, ICE will continue to protect Americans by arresting and removing criminal illegal aliens from our country."

‘GHOSTS’ ON FLORIDA HIGHWAYS: ROADSIDE STINGS SNARE 249 ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS, OFFICERS WARN MANY MORE HIDING

Those arrested over the weekend include:

WEEKEND ROUNDUP: CONVICTED MURDERERS, CHILD SEX ABUSERS AMONG ILLEGAL ALIENS NABBED BY ICE ACROSS US

Nine others arrested had criminal convictions for a range of offenses, including child sex crimes, assault with a deadly weapon and witness tampering.

DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin recently stated that the agency is on track to surpass deportation figures from 2025, a year that saw 442,000 formal deportations and removals, with DHS reporting over 605,000 total removals overall.

"In fact, within the next six weeks, we'll probably pass what we deported in all of 2025," Mullin said in a video posted Monday by the Trump administration's Rapid Response account on X.

In addition to targeting violent criminals for deportation, immigration authorities have also focused on those committing fraud and those who obtained U.S. citizenship fraudulently.

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Supporters attending President Donald Trump's rally on the National Mall acknowledged feeling the pinch from higher gas prices, but they largely declined to blame Trump — instead pointing to the Iran conflict and lingering frustration with inflation under former President Joe Biden.

"My least favorite president ran gas up to about $5 a gallon for no reason, and that was Mr. Biden," said Billy of North Carolina.

Fox News Digital spoke with Americans who gathered on the National Mall Wednesday evening for President Donald Trump's rally kicking off the "Great American State Fair" celebrating the nation's 250th anniversary, where attendees weighed in on whether they are feeling pain in their pockets as affordability concerns loom over the war with Iran and midterm elections in November.

"Affordability has a lot to do with just interest rates that went up the highest in 48 years under President Biden, so it's going to take some time to get those prices back down to where we were before that," said James McNair of Maryland.

GAS SURGE TIED TO IRAN CONFLICT HITS SWING STATES, TESTING TRUMP’S LOW-PRICE PITCH

"I'm not that concerned about the affordability thing. I think that our president is probably the best businessman to ever be president, and things will turn," added James’ brother, David.

"Being in Gen Z, everything's very expensive now," William of New York said in summary.

Many attendees shared that while they recognize gas prices are high, they attribute the recent spike to the escalating conflict with Iran—a development they continue to support.

TRUMP PROMISED LOWER COSTS; THE IRAN CONFLICT NOW THREATENS THAT PLEDGE

"I don't think the prices in general have gotten any worse than when Biden was in the administration," said Lisa of Maryland.

Before the war, the national average price of gasoline was $2.98 per gallon. Prices climbed to a peak of $4.56 per gallon in late May before gradually declining to $3.87 per gallon by the end of June.

Lisa and her husband, Matt, both served in the Army and expressed diverging opinions on affordability and Trump’s handling of Iran.

PENTAGON ESTIMATES IRAN WAR COST $11.3B IN THE FIRST SIX DAYS IN CLOSED-DOOR CONGRESSIONAL HEARING: REPORT

"Prices have definitely gone up and they do get my attention," said Matt of Maryland.

Matt shared that his drill sergeants were warning him of being deployed to Iran back in 1985. "Here we are today in 2026, still dealing with this problem."

"If we're worried about gas prices, we're going to be worrying again and again and again until we get a handle on regimes that just don't share our values," said Matt.

BLACKROCK CEO LARRY FINK ARGUES US-IRAN CONFLICT WON'T DERAIL ECONOMY AS GAS PRICES SURGE

Norma Holm of Indiana also said she believed Iran would eventually have to be dealt with and that it was better to address the issue head-on than leave it for the next generation.

"We are taking it for the team with the gas prices and everything else, but things are stabling, and President Trump, don't underestimate him."

Washington and Tehran agreed to halt military strikes in the region with delegations scheduled to meet June 30 in Doha, Qatar for talks.

Other attendees are hoping that a resolution to the Iran conflict will lead to lower prices.

"As the Iran war comes to an end and the peace deal hopefully gels, we'll see. I think gas prices are already coming down, not tremendously, not where we would like to see, but those things take time," said James of New York.

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