Re­searchers ques­tion val­ue of Medicare Part D cov­er­age for obe­si­ty drugs

As the push to ex­tend Medicare cov­er­age to weight loss drugs gains mo­men­tum, a group of re­searchers has cal­cu­lat­ed that the cost could be quite sub­stan­tial.

If all es­ti­mat­ed Medicare ben­e­fi­cia­ries with obe­si­ty used No­vo Nordisk’s semaglu­tide for weight loss, for ex­am­ple, the cost would ex­ceed the en­tire Part D bud­get, ac­cord­ing to a study pub­lished in the New Eng­land Jour­nal of Med­i­cine on Sat­ur­day. At 10% up­take, to­tal spend­ing would hov­er around $26.8 bil­lion for brand-name semaglu­tide, the re­searchers wrote, ex­clud­ing the costs as­so­ci­at­ed with po­ten­tial use by peo­ple who are over­weight.

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