The new glucagon receptor agonist drugs have been heralded as an important advance in helping people lose weight. Obesity has long been identified as a primary cause of many health issues, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease and kidney disease. So helping people to lose weight should reduce the prevalence of these conditions and lower the cost of treating those diseases. Is that the case? New research suggest it is not. The authors used insurance claims data to compare matched patients who did and did not start a course of therapy on the drugs. In the first year there was some lowering of expense on diabetes drugs, more than offset by an increase in outpatient care use, often for monitoring of effects of the drugs, coupled with the cost of the weight loss drugs. In a smaller group of patients followed for five years, no net reduction in spending was found.
I would note that in recent months there has been a concerted effort to lower the cost of these weight loss drugs, which may change the calculation on whether they reduce overall spending. It also may be that over a longer period of time there are significant reductions. But we are also learning of more side effects from those drugs and those side effects also incur treatment costs. The drugs may be helpful to people needing to lose weight but they appear unlikely to help solve our health spending issues. (NBER Paper)
