ARS TECHNICA – With the debut of remarkably effective weight-loss drugs, America’s high obesity rate and its uniquely astronomical prescription drug pricing appear to be set on a catastrophic collision course.
This trajectory threatens to “bankrupt our entire health care system,” according to a new Senate report that modeled the economic impact of the drugs in different uptake scenarios.
If just half of the adults in the US with obesity start taking a new weight-loss drug, such as Wegovy, the collective cost would total an estimated $411 billion per year, the analysis found.
That’s more than the $406 billion Americans spent in 2022 on all prescription drugs combined.
While the bulk of the spending on weight-loss drugs will occur in the commercial market—which could easily lead to spikes in health insurance premiums—taxpayer-funded Medicare and Medicaid programs will also see an extraordinary financial burden.
In the scenario that half of adults with obesity go on the drug, the cost to those federal programs would total $166 billion per year, rivaling the programs’ total 2022 drug costs of $175 billion.
In all, by 2031, total US spending on prescription drugs is poised to reach over $1 trillion per year due to weight-loss drugs.
Without them, the baseline projected spending on all prescription drugs would be just under $600 billion.
The analysis was put together by the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) committee …
BETH MOLE is Ars Technica’s Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes.
