Alex Eben Meyer
In the last few years, a new type of weight loss drug—sold under brand names including Ozempic and Mounjaro—has taken America by storm. While some view medication-induced weight loss as vanity, Yale epidemiology professor Alison Galvani sees it as a matter of life and death. More than 40 percent of Americans are obese, putting them at higher risk of cardiovascular disease and many cancers. “These drugs have the potential to significantly impact public health,” Galvani says.
In a paper recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Galvani and colleagues calculated how many lives could be saved if financial and insurance barriers were removed, allowing access to the drugs for everyone who is medically eligible for them: people with diabetes, obesity, or near-obesity with related health conditions.
The research also considered health equity, since obesity is more common among lower socioeconomic groups, who often lack quality private insurance. The researchers took into account how many people qualify for the drugs, what proportion would take them if financial barriers were eliminated, and how many would drop down from the obese and severely obese body mass index (BMI) ranges. Linking these figures with data on obesity-related deaths, they concluded that expanded access would likely prevent more than 42,000 deaths a year.
Thousands of diabetics, uninsured individuals, and Medicare recipients would benefit. Currently, weight-loss drugs are expected to avert 8,592 deaths per year, nearly all among people with private insurance.
At current prices, prescribing the new drugs to all eligible Medicaid and Medicare recipients is “infeasible,” Galvani says, and only the wealthiest can afford the roughly $1,000-per-month out-of-pocket price tag without insurance. But lowering prices could save money in the long run by preventing costly conditions like diabetes and heart disease. Pointing to early bipartisan efforts to lower prices, she says, “there is hope.”
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