Oz Announces the BALANCE Model to Expand Access to GLP-1 Treatments
December 23, 2025 · CMSHHSgov · 0:01:26
Embedded from the source channel — never re-uploaded. Watch on YouTube
What happened
CMS published a short announcement video on December 23, 2025, in which Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz announces the BALANCE model. BALANCE — Better Approaches to Lifestyle and Nutrition for Comprehensive hEalth — aims, in CMS’s description, to increase access to select GLP-1 medications and healthy lifestyle interventions for people with Medicare and Medicaid, and will lower the cost of these drugs, helping people improve their long-term health and potentially preventing chronic disease and disability.
Why it matters
BALANCE is CMS’s coverage vehicle for the GLP-1 pricing push the President and Oz announced at the White House through 2025: where the Most Favored Nation announcements set prices with manufacturers, BALANCE is the model meant to carry lower-cost GLP-1 access into Medicare and Medicaid themselves. Its results — participation, prices paid, and uptake — are checkable against this announcement.
Scoreboard watch
This is a candidate item for the weekly scoreboard: the BALANCE model’s promise of lower-cost GLP-1 access for Medicare and Medicaid enrollees, as Oz stated it in the announcement, to be checked against the model’s published terms and results.
Sources: CMSHHSgov (CMS official channel), “CMS BALANCE Model Aims to Expand ACCESS to GLP-1 Treatments,” December 23, 2025 (official upload, embedded above). Statements attributed to Dr. Oz and CMS as made in the announcement and its official description.
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