New FDA-Approved Obesity Drug's Promise Now Hinges On Insurance
'Obesity Drug's Promise Now Hinges On Insurance,' NPR, July 6, 2021.
When a promising new drug to treat obesity was approved by the Food and Drug Administration for sale in the U.S. last month, it was the first such treatment to gain approval since 2014. In clinical trials, weekly injections of semaglutide — or Wegovy, as it's been branded — helped people drop an average of 15% of their body weight. That's an average of about 34 pounds over 16 months, before their weight plateaued, a far greater weight loss, obesity specialists say, than achieved with other drugs on the market.
At least as important, Wegovy raised none of the alarm bells with the FDA or obesity doctors that it might trigger serious side effects of the sort some people experienced by taking fen-phen or other previous medical treatments for obesity. But with a price tag for Wegovy of $1,000 to $1,500 a month, a big question remains: Will insurers cover its significant cost for the millions such as Marleen Greenleaf who might benefit?
Greenleaf grew up on the island of Trinidad, where her family paid little heed to what they ate and paid a high medical price, she says: "My husband has diabetes, my sister has diabetes, my brother has diabetes."
Since then, she's tried — and failed — at numerous diets, says Greenleaf, now 58 and an administrator at a charter school in Washington, D.C. Then, in 2018, she signed up for the clinical trial of a new drug — a once-weekly shot that changes the way her brain signals hunger...
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https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/07/06/1007772101/obesity-drugs-promise-now-hinges-on-insurance-coverage