Healthcare spending is eating up an increasingly large portion of the federal budget, to the point that over the next 30 years, per the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, healthcare outlays will consume $1 out of every $10 of our annual total economic output.

Thankfully, private-sector scientific innovation may help tamp down the healthcare red ink, specifically semaglutide, better known as Ozempic. Approved in 2017 by the Food and Drug Administration for use in adults with Type 2 diabetes, Ozempic has taken the world by storm for its unparalleled success as an anti-obesity measure. Even television viewers unfamiliar with the drug have likely heard its commercial jingle, “Oh, Oh, Oh, Ozempic,” a riff on David Paton’s 1974 song “Magic,” which reached No. 5 in the United States on the Billboard Hot 100.

Ozempic is a rebuke of sorts to skeptics who contend weight loss only happens the old-fashioned way, through routine exercise and a healthy, limited diet. Various clinical trials have demonstrated Ozempic results in at least 10% weight loss per year for its patients for at least four years of use, with reduced hunger from the drug resulting in a 9% decrease in grocery spending, per a Morgan Stanley analysis.

But beyond the health benefits of reducing obesity, which is a major risk factor in half of all of the nation’s top 10 leading causes of death, Ozempic also evidently reduces those direct causes of death themselves.

In a stunning May announcement of clinical-trial data, Novo Nordisk announced patients receiving weekly Ozempic injections were 24% less likely to have “major kidney disease events,” including death and kidney failure. They also were 29% less likely to die from heart attacks and major cardiovascular events and were 20% less likely to die of any cause than study participants getting a placebo over a multiyear period. Previous studies have also indicated that Ozempic-class drugs treat or reduce sleep apnea, polycystic ovary syndrome, fatty liver disease and cancer risk, the progression or risk of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, and alcohol use disorder.

What do all of the conditions targeted by Ozempic have in common? Not only are they chronic or fatal in many cases, but they’re also often expensive for insurers to treat and productivity killers for the unlucky patients suffering from them. Regarding Ozempic as a mere weight loss program constitutes a skin-deep understanding of this drug, which, if applied as a proactive offense against leading causes of death and disability, could dramatically improve the vigor and fecundity of the workforce and reap taxpayers a net return on their investment in the process.

Ozempic is drawing predictable criticism from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and his unmerry band of socialist acolytes. They lambast Novo Nordisk for listing a monthly supply of Ozempic for upward of $900. That means Medicare coverage of the drug for all obese beneficiaries would cost Uncle Sam a quarter-trillion dollars in just one year, about twice the total existing prescription drug bill for Medicare’s annual expenditures. CBO Director Phillip Swagel estimates the list price of the drug would have to fall by 90% for federal coverage to prove deficit neutral.

It’s true that the U.S. pays a higher list price for Ozempic, as we do for most drugs, to recoup the cost of medical research and development, on which Novo Nordisk spent $5 billion in just the last year. And despite Ozempic’s current reputation as a crash diet for celebutantes hoping to downgrade from a size two to a double zero, taxpayers will inevitably want to pay proactively for the preventive treatments of Ozempic as its genuine health benefits are increasingly understood.

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A University of Southern California Schaffer Center for Health Policy study found that Ozempic coverage by Medicare could offset $175 billion in costs in one decade of use and $700 billion in 30 years. Most savings would come from Medicare Part A due to reduced hospital, hospice, home care, and nursing home spending. A decade of Medicare coverage would halve the obesity rate of its beneficiaries and recoup $1 trillion in net societal benefit from reduced disability.

Wanting Ozempic to become cheap enough to become accessible to all doesn’t mean immediately making it affordable to all. With the government staying out of the way, allowing medical research and development to recoup its costs, and bringing prices down the old-fashioned way, it will be not just economically justified but perhaps imperative for insurers to embrace Ozempic for the masses.