A lot of your shoppers who are actually fighting their weight may quickly be skinny, due to the brand new “glucagon-like peptide-1 agonist” medication and different weight-loss medication that present up sooner or later.

The brand new medication, Wegovy and Saxenda, have surprised weight-loss specialists who as soon as argued that willpower was the one smart protection towards weight problems by serving to individuals lose as a lot as 21% of their weight with out a lot further effort. Novo Nordisk says weekly use of the drug cuts the chance of coronary heart assault and stroke by about 20%.

Insurers and their reinsurers have seen enthusiasm about weight-loss surprise medication come and go for many years, however now medical specialists at Gen Re, Reinsurance Group of America, Munich Re, Scor and Swiss Re are beginning let their guard down and surprise what would possibly occur if the GLP-1 agonists actually work, and hold working.

Gina Guzman, chief medical director at Munich Re Life North America, wrote the article, “Have We Discovered the Remedy to Finish Weight problems?” for Munich Re Life US in June 2023, and “ May weight problems medication scale back coronary heart illness?” for the corporate earlier this month.

“ It’s a really thrilling time,” Guzman mentioned final week in an interview.

She identified that about 50% of Individuals are overweight and 70% weigh greater than they need to.

“One thing must be finished to bend the curve,” Guzman mentioned.

What it means: In your shoppers with weight issues, loss of life and taxes should still be inevitable, however weight problems may not be.

The backdrop: Medical doctors use the physique mass index as a tough indicator of how a affected person’s weight compares with the optimum weight. BMI is the same as the affected person’s weight in kilograms divided by the sq. of the affected person’s peak.

The usual U.S. BMI cutoffs are 25 kilograms per sq. meter for chubby (Guzman makes use of 27), 30 for weight problems and 40 for extreme weight problems.

In 2019, about 7.6% of U.S. adults suffered from extreme weight problems, in response to the U.S. Authorities Accountability Workplace.

GAO investigators discovered 9 anti-obesity medication on the U.S. market in 2019, together with phentermine, a drug that has been accepted by the federal Meals and Drug Administration since 1959.

One other drug, a mix of phentermine and topiramate, has been accepted since 2012 and prices a lot lower than Wegovy or Saxenda however is assessed by the FDA as doubtlessly habit-forming.

Each docs and sufferers are extra excited in regards to the GLP-1 agonists as a result of, at this level, they appear to be safer and more practical than the older weight-loss medication.

The FDA accepted liraglutide, the drug that Novo Nordisk sells as Saxenda, in 2014. It accepted semaglutide, the drug the corporate sells as Wegovy, as a weight-loss drug in 2021.

Corporations have additionally been promoting variations of the GLP-1 agonists as sort 2 diabetes management medication for about 20 years.

One impediment is that Wegovy and Saxenda are each injectable medication, however Novo Nordisk is already promoting an oral type of semaglutide, Rybelsus, for individuals with sort 2 diabetes.

Medical doctors wrote prescriptions for Wegovy, Saxenda and comparable medication for about 9 million Individuals within the final quarter of 2022, in response to Trilliant Well being, a well being knowledge evaluation agency.

Considerations: Guzman famous in her articles for Munich Re that Wegovy and Saxenda could cause uncomfortable side effects, together with nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, pancreatitis, and kidney and liver harm.

“A examine final yr reported that fifty.3% of adults with sort 2 diabetes who had been prescribed GLP-1 receptor agonists discontinued the medicine inside one yr,” Guzman wrote

The GLP-1 agonist discontinuation fee was increased than that for some other class of diabetes medicine, Guzman added.

Well being care policymakers are frightened in regards to the sort of hype that after boosted opioid gross sales.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, complained in March 2023 that Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, a nominee for the federal 2025-2030 Dietary Pointers Advisory Committee, had acquired tens of 1000’s of {dollars} from the makers of weight-loss and weight problems medication, together with the makers of semaglutide and Ozempic.

Nonetheless one other concern is price.

The complete record value of Wegovy is about $16,000 per yr, in response to GoodRx Well being.

In August 2023, Francesca Lim of Columbia College and different researchers reported in JAMA Community Open that semaglutide works higher than a phentermine-topiramate mixture drug to scale back overweight adolescents’ weight.

However the phentermine-topiramate mixture is a lot cheaper that it in all probability provides a wholesome yr to an overweight adolescent’s life for simply $60,000, in contrast with a price of $1.1 million for an additional yr of wholesome life for Wegovy.

GLP-1 agonist insurance coverage protection: In 2019, the GAO estimated that about 660,000 Individuals had used prescription weight-loss medication from 2012 by way of 2016.

Non-public insurance coverage paid for the medication for 25% of these sufferers. Medicaid paid for the medication for 4% of the sufferers and Medicare paid for the medication for two%.

At present, many private and non-private plans are beginning to pay for GLP-1 agonists for at the very least some sufferers, despite the excessive price.