Popular weight loss drugs remain out of reach for many who need them
Popular weight loss drugs remain out of reach for many who need them
Weight loss drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound have been hailed as a revolution. Yet the high cost and lack of insurance coverage make them largely unattainable.
The cost is mostly because of government enforced monopoly.
These are small peptides, relatively cheap to produce.
Are there already studies on the long-term effect on people's weight? I lost (and gained) weight quite often in my life and I would say without changing habits and the structure of your life, it's impossible to achieve a permanent effect.
If weight loss is iduced with medication only, I would expect the effect to stop as soon as you stop taking the substance.
Or is such a prescription typically coupled with sport programs and health counseling?
I know two people who have been on it. It seems to be a momentum builder, you require significantly less food to feel full and you feel full longer. So a reasonable portion of chicken and a salad does feel like a full meal, so a calorie restricted diet is easier to stick to. The weight DOES start coming off and you see progress and build good habits.
If you go off it you'll regain 70% of the weight in a year based on early studies.
But it's unclear how long the users had been on it to begin with.
It can take years for your body to actually get rid of the fat cells that you emptied while losing weight, for example.Humans cannot lose fat cells without medical intervention. They shrink to a smaller size, but never go away.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Insurance companies typically refuse to reimburse the around $1,000 monthly cost of the injections or, when they do pay, put up high barriers to authorizing payments.
Dr. Laura Davisson, director of West Virginia University’s medical weight management program, said it’s a challenge to help her patients pay for the drugs.
Cabandugama, of the Cleveland Clinic, said that insurance companies often refuse to cover the cost of weight loss medications because obesity is still seen as a cosmetic issue, instead of a chronic disease.
Another barrier, he added, is a 2003 law that prohibits Medicare from covering weight loss drugs, cutting off a huge group of potential patients.
A spokesperson for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said in a statement that the agency is currently reviewing the FDA’s approval to expand the use of Wegovy to reduce heart attack and stroke risk.
Dr. Drake Bellanger, an obesity medicine specialist at the Louisiana Center for Bariatrics in Baton Rouge, worries about losing patients because of the cost of the drugs.
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I thought even the latest rounds of ozempic were showing bad side effects? I've been eyeballing this shit and I still don't want to take the plunge.