January 30, 2026 — Good luck if you want to make sense of headlines about health insurance and coverage trends for GLP-1 medicines. Peruse the headlines and you can find just about any narrative you want. “Rising health premiums push more small business to drop coverage,” according to Inc. “Employers are opting out of covering GLP-1s,” claims Hines, a […]
December 26, 2025 — This year is quickly winding down and with it, some unpleasant memories may, thankfully, fade. But for our interest in obesity and health, 2025 has been a very eventful year of progress, with five milestones that are particular standouts. So let’s pause and celebrate this progress. 1. Global Embrace of Obesity Care Perhaps the biggest […]
December 14, 2025 — Truveta this week published data that reveals striking growth in the use of GLP-1s by women with PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome). Prescriptions for semaglutide or tirzepatide have risen by more than 700% in women with PCOS, according to their analysis. So don’t think that this is slipping right by the bean counters at drug benefit […]
November 7, 2025 — President Trump held a press event yesterday to issue some very welcome news on coverage and prices for obesity medicines. On prices, they are coming down. In reality, this is an extension of the ongoing trend of downward pressure on these prices that has been in play since the day that semaglutide and tirzepatide launched […]
September 28, 2025 — Back in March 2024, we welcomed the news of a door opening ever so slightly for Medicare Part D plans to cover GLP-1s in people with obesity and heart disease. So 18 months later, it’s reasonable to ask, how’s that working out for everyone? A new research letter in JAMA gives us an answer, but […]
January 13, 2025 — Many years of working on obesity has taught us one thing. Success does not come easily. And yet in this new year, it appears that the new administration in Washington will have an opportunity to claim an easy win on obesity. CMS has a new rule for obesity drugs that can become final in the […]
January 12, 2025 — Last week we got another glimpse of incremental progress in coverage for obesity medicines in health insurance plans. CMS announced that Medicare drug plans (Part D or Medicare Advantage) could now cover Zepbound (tirzepatide) when doctors prescribe it to patients for obesity and sleep apnea. This is not the opening of floodgates. It is movement […]
December 13, 2024 — Some pharmacy benefit plans have taken a dark turn when it comes to obesity medicines. Let’s not sugarcoat it. They are exploiting people with obesity through abusive copays on drugs like Wegovy and Ozempic – two brands of semaglutide. These PBMs pretend they are covering part of the cost of the drug. But in fact, […]
December 10, 2024 — A pitched battle is underway. The fight is for equitable access to obesity medicines that can be life-changing for people living with obesity. Right now, we have a bit of a stalemate and money is the sticking point. So when Andrew Ross Sorkin put the question of greed, economics, and health to the CEO of […]
February 18, 2024 — Who knew that financial toxicity was a thing? Perhaps like us, you have merely thought of it as the financial burden of healthcare – without assigning it the status of a medical complication that dysfunctional healthcare causes. But recent publications are making it ever more clear that people living with chronic diseases are having to […]
