Posts Tagged ‘health economics’

Looking Away from Care for Severe Obesity

April 17, 2023 — Writing about The Whale in Psychology Today, counselor Kari Anderson tells us the movie brings a story into view that we look away from too often. “Real people with real stories are suffering, feeling trapped in their own bodies and unable to leave their homes,” she writes. This is uncomfortable viewing for many people because, […]

Obesity Care and Health Payers: Getting Real

April 14, 2023 — For decades, we’ve watched growth in the prevalence of obesity and the chronic diseases it causes. Health systems have profited from treating those downstream diseases. Without really thinking about it, public health policy and payers have conspired to deny care for the root cause of those diseases – obesity. Bias inspired some of this because […]

Biosimilars and PBMs: The Joke’s on Us

April 12, 2023 — Two innovations in health systems and health policy – PBMs and biosimilars – are supposed to save us money on drugs. But so far, it looks like the joke is on us. PBMs (pharmacy benefit managers) can actually drive prices higher. Their stated purpose is just the opposite – to drive drug costs down. Adding […]

OCW2023: The Fear of Delivering Obesity Care

February 28, 2023 — To be sure, fear of change is understandable. The number of people living with obesity and suffering its complications has grown large. Achieving a balance between treating a problem like obesity and preventing it is tricky. To make it worse, we are living in a time when the media has figured out that fear and […]

Is Medical Care Becoming a Luxury?

February 8, 2023 — “I can’t afford to spend any more time here [in the hospital]. I don’t have the money.” These are the words of a victim in the mass shooting at Half Moon Bay, California, last month. It points to an uncomfortable truth. Increasingly, medical care is becoming a luxury. Helaine Olen describes it for the Washington […]

Five Trends to Define 2023 in Obesity and Health

January 1, 2023 — While some of us slept last night, the calendar rolled us into the start of a whole new year. A clean slate with new challenges and opportunities. So what lies ahead? It’s impossible to know (as our review of 2022 predictions nicely shows), but that won’t stop us from offering our best guess. In that […]

Amgen Bringing More Competition into Obesity

December 5, 2022 — Move over, Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly. Amgen wants a piece of the action in obesity treatment. With some obvious pride of accomplishment, Amgen unveiled results from a phase 1 study of its dual action conjugate on Saturday. This new experimental drug, AMG 133, is a molecule that combines peptides to activate GLP-1 receptors (as […]

Can We Afford Optimism About Treating Obesity?

November 25, 2022 — “Can’t never could.” This old bit of Southern American wisdom aptly describes one of the startling reactions to impressive progress in obesity treatment – “we can’t do this. It will cost too much.” This reaction has been part of the landscape of obesity care for some time, so it should not be startling. But when […]

An Economic Doom Loop for Obesity Care

November 6, 2022 — A pair of thoughts kept floating through the halls of ObesityWeek 2022 and they set up something that seems like an economic doom loop for the future of obesity care. The new drugs for obesity are amazing. But they’re too damn expensive. Professor John Cawley gave an excellent presentation on the economics of obesity that […]

Top Ten Thoughts to Take Home from OW2022

November 5, 2022 — It’s been quite a week in San Diego and we hope that everyone is safely home or on their way. So with the wrap-up of OW2022 yesterday, here are a few thoughts we’ll take home with us from this remarkable week. 1. Pediatric Obesity Care Is Set to Leap Forward It’s hard to miss this […]