How much should weight loss medications be like Wegovy and Zepbound?
It is easy to provide a medical box for transparent weight loss drugs such as Wegovy and Zepbound, which turns out to prevent heart attacks, strokes and rescue lives.
But for employers and government programs required to pay the price of medications, the financial issue for them is less clear. Do the benefits of medicines deserve their tremendous cost?
The answer now is no, according to New study Posted on Friday in Jama Health Forum, by researchers at the University of Chicago.
To become costly effective through the common measure that health economists use, the price of Novo Nordisk should be reduced by more than 80 percent, to $ 127 per month. ELI Lilly will be costly effective if its price decreases by about a third, to $ 361 per month. (The researchers said that Zepbound justifies a higher price, as it has produced greater benefits in clinical trials).
“There is no doubt that medications show huge health benefits,” said David Kim, a health expert at the University of Chicago and the author of the study, which was funded by government scholarships. “The problem is that the price is very high.”
There is widespread hope that medications are effectively paid for themselves in the long run, by making patients healthier and preventing expensive medical bills. It is not yet clear whether it will turn into a right.
Elie Lily rejected the results of the new study, on the pretext that she ignored the results of many clinical trials in which the company’s drug showed benefit. The company, a spokeswoman for the company, said she used a “limited data set to extract comprehensive conclusions.” “There are no universally acceptable thresholds for what the drug is effective in terms of cost,” said Liz Skrbkova, a spokeswoman for Novo Nordisk.
The employers and government programs pay different drugs, and these numbers always remain secret. Chicago University researchers have estimated that the price of Wegovy is $ 700 per month, on average, compared to $ 520 for Zepbound.
The high demand for medicines caused the costs of employers, which prompted some companies to impose restrictions on those who can obtain them, or stop covering the medications completely. Kon Edison, the power utility that serves New York City and Witchester Province, said it needed to raise prices to compensate for the increasing expenses that included an increase in spending on weight loss medications.
Medicare covers drugs for patients with diabetes, a smaller sub -group of people who deal with both obesity and another health condition, such as the heart problem, or sleep breathing. Congress resisted the expanded coverage of the older millions of weight gain or obesity, as it will be very expensive.
Patients who pay for medicines using their own money instead of joining the changing prices; Some pay more than $ 1,300 a month. But for a low dose of zepbound, patients can pay $ 350 From the pocket, a price that Chicago University researchers considered cost effective.
To reach their estimates, the researchers conducted a computer simulation of what might happen if people with weight gain or obese are taken on one of the weight loss medications for the rest of their lives. Based on the results of clinical trials, the expected model is the benefits that may accumulate in the long run. Many patients with weight gain will not become obese, for example. Other patients will avoid diabetes or heart disease. They will remain fruitful, and he was discharged from the hospital.
These benefits that have been added to many years of good health-the so-called modified life years. Many health economists believe it is reasonable for society to pay $ 100,000 per healthy year. But in the model, the good years of health provided by Wegovy and Zepbound cost much more.
Pharmaceutical companies often decrease severely from cost -cost event, saying they fail to obtain real -value drugs that can bring them to patients and societies. However, they sometimes finance such studies. and The analysis funded by Novo NordskLike this by Chicago University researchers, the company’s property was found to lose weight as effective.