October 3, 2024 — Late yesterday, FDA announced that Lilly’s tirzepatide shortage is officially over. Both Mounjaro and Zepbound are fully available in all marketed strengths and dosage forms. “The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has determined the shortage of tirzepatide injection, a glucagon-like peptide 1 (GLP-1) medication, has been resolved. Tirzepatide injection has been in shortage since 2022 […]
October 2, 2024 — We are witnessing something rare. It is a sweeping change in how people are looking at a whole spectrum of chronic diseases. They all tie back to obesity: hypertension, high cholesterol, diabetes, many cancers, liver disease, kidney disease, and joint disease come quickly to mind. Most of the time, the change in perspective comes in […]
September 28, 2024 — Since forever, health systems have been closed to the need for obesity care. While obesity prevalence tripled, care providers, health plans, and even government policy doubled down on a simple response. “Your obesity is not our problem. It’s yours. Go away, eat less, move more, and come back when you’ve lost 25, 50, or 100 […]
September 26, 2024 — It was an interesting day that we spent talking with health policy makers in the Senate yesterday. Refreshing in a way, because the conversations about obesity are so different from the conversations we were having just a few years ago. Not a single person raised the false issue of “personal responsibility” for “being obese.” Only […]
September 25, 2024 — This was definitely a textbook case of sitting in the hot seat. For more than two hours the CEO of Novo Nordisk, Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, faced intense questions in the Senate HELP Committee about drug pricing for the company’s diabetes and obesity medicines. If you want a sense of the tone for the hearing, consider […]
September 19, 2024 — Maybe you’ve noticed this is an election year. This might explain some of the heat on pricing that both obesity drug makers and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) are feeling. Both of the U.S. candidates for president are making promises to bring down drug prices. Senator Bernie Sanders and his Senate health committee is turning up […]
September 13, 2024 — In a perverse way, it is nostalgic. Yesterday, the Trust for America’s Health (TFAH) published the latest edition of their annual series: State of Obesity 2024. Though the subtitle is “Better Policies for a Healthier America,” it seems more like a replay of golden oldies in obesity policy. Reading this report, we come away with […]
September 7, 2024 — Recently, Novo Nordisk CEO Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen did a rare interview with NBC News to talk about the high price of obesity medicines that are proving to be so important for so many people. It seemed like a dress rehearsal for his coming appearance at a Senate hearing on the subject. He brought up the […]
August 27, 2024 — That was quick. At about 6 am today, we posted to say that obesity drug prices are stuck in the spotlight. “Bold leadership on obesity drug pricing and access to care is the only thing that will bring relief from this uncomfortable spotlight,” we wrote. Before the end of the hour, Lilly took the cue. […]
August 27, 2024 — How big might the semaglutide budget bomb be? The authors of a new brief report in Annals of Internal Medicine today are making a point. How threatening can we make this sound? Right up front in their title, they label their estimates as the “maximum costs of expanded Medicare coverage of semaglutide for cardiovascular risk […]
