> It's much more effective to address the obesity problem on the front end.

Is it? GLPs cost literally pennies to manufacture in bulk. The government could easily justify a trillion to just buy the rights and give it away for free and still come out ahead on healthcare cost savings.

Everything your suggesting sounds like a lot of work by comparison.

Why not both? Because we’ve been “addressing on the front end” for a while without results. Making places walkable and getting (especially already obese) kids onto healthy food are things we should be doing, but need more support and take longer than a drug, which admittedly has side effects but seems healthier than waiting.

And Obama’s healthier lunches received pushback because they had some stupid requirements, like reducing salt intake, and poor implementation: maybe not Obama’s fault, but should’ve been addressed, IME students were forced to take a fruit or vegetable they would just throw away, and sometimes the “fruit” were these gross bananas that were simultaneously green and brown/mushy. They also received pushback from kids themselves and their parents.

> We have fast food and junk food advertising targeting kids.

The government is also heavily subsidizing corn, which made corn syrup the cheapest sweetener.

Medicare is currently something like 14% of the budget and covers 20% of the population.

This may be true, but I think the electorate would go fucking bananas for free GLP-1s.

True, but GLPs in particular are obvious.

Being fat is a moral failing though? It’s also not portrayed that way, see the entire body positivity/healthy at every size movement.

Kind of hard to feel sorry for the richest country in the world when they refuse to spend enough money to take care of their people enough to even meet basic national security standards.