Drugs for obesity: Holiday week recap

December 26, 2023

For the holiday week, I’m reviewing some of the important stories I’ve covered during 2023. 

One of the most important clinical stories of this year has been the growing evidence of effectiveness of the GLP-1 drugs used to treat diabetes and obesity.  These drugs remain painfully expensive, though, and only 38% of employer sponsored health plans cover their use for obesity. Although the drugs can prevent many medical problems, they will not lower overall medical costs.

Here are links to some  Employer Coverage posts on these medications, in case you missed them the first time around:

December 18: New research provides further support for obesity drugs.  This covers safety in pregnancy, lower rates of colorectal cancer in those with diabetes, and weight regain after stopping tirzepatide. Here is a November post by my colleague Patricia Toro on weight gain after discontinuing semaglutide 

December 7:  New obesity drugs will not likely lower total medical costs  Even though these drugs can prevent a lot of (expensive) disease, they will still only be cost effective (we will gain health but total medical costs will rise) as opposed to cost saving (where we gain health and lower medical costs)

November 20: More promising news on GLP-1 drugs.   Semaglutide lower cardiac risk by 20% in a high risk population 

November 1: What is the real cost of GLP-1 medications?  The net cost of these drugs is dramatically lower than the ‘list’ price 

September 4:  Semaglutide decreases symptoms of congestive heart failure  Those treated for obesity were less likely to have symptoms of congestive heart failure 

June 22: Semaglutide associated with large weight loss in the real world  A rare look at results of this drug class from a large electronic health record database

Thanks for reading.  You can find previous posts in the Employer Coverage archive

Please “like” and suggest this newsletter to friends and colleagues. Thanks!

Illustration by Dall-E