[Aurornis]

> You’re thinking too highly about the incentives of the US healthcare system. Since insurance is tied to your employer (and therefore changing every few years)

Most people don’t change jobs or insurance companies every few years. When they do, it’s often within similar regions and industries so the chances of ending up right back under the same insurance company are significant.

Regardless, the issue is more complicated than your line of thinking. Insurance companies have very small profit margins. Current GLP-1 drugs are expensive, around $1,000 per month.

So each patient on GLP-1 drugs costs an extra $12K per year (roughly) or $120K per decade. That would have to offset a lot of other expenditures to break even from a pure cost perspective, which isn’t supported by the math. So the only alternative would be to raise everyone’s rates.

I know the insurance industry is the favorite target for explaining everything people dislike about healthcare right now, but at the end of the day they can’t conjure money out of nothing to cover everything at any cost demanded by drug makers. These drugs are super expensive and honestly it’s kind of amazing that so many people are getting them covered at all.

[DrillShopper]

I haven't changed jobs and I've had three different health insurance companies in as many years, all of which needed new prior auths for Trulicity/Mounjaro.

[alphabettsy]

A night in the hospital is easily $12k almost anywhere in the U.S.

People with chronic health conditions spend an inordinate amount of time at the doctor and in hospitals. That could save a significant amount of money if that’s reduced or eliminated. Not to mention the time savings.

I could be wrong, but all things being equal doesn’t it make sense to spend $12k/year on medication than $12/year on doctor and specialist visits in addition to medication?

[rstuart4133]

A one off anecdote here - I ended up in hospital for a TIA. I'm in Australia, and this is a public hospital. Free in other words. I have never seen so many seriously obese people in my life. They were all occupying hospital beds. I swear at least half the beds were use occupied by them. Meanwhile, we have ambulance lining the ramps of hospitals, with patients in them, waiting for bed to become free.

To put the this in perspective, where I live spends about $10,000/yr/person on health. That's all kinds of health. I'm not sure $5,000/yr (which is about the price here) of GLP-1 would be a generate proportionate decline, but I would not write it off. The $10K is paid by everybody, the $5k would only be for the obese.