Yes I know. And I am totally in favor of single payer for all.
From 2014
BlockquoteIt may not be polling well, but President Barack Obama isn’t too worried about the Affordable Care Act’s nickname, Obamacare, or the health care law’s impact on his legacy. “I like it. I don’t mind,” the president told former NBA star Charles Barkley in an interview that aired Sunday about the term Obamacare. “And I tell you, five years from now, when everybody’s saying, ‘Man, I’m sure glad we got health care,’ there are going to be a whole bunch of people who don’t call it Obamacare anymore because they don’t want me to get the credit.”
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But they still have medicaid for those who qualify. Medicaid expansion was mostly for adults without children but who were in the income qualified bracket. Children and families with children qualified in Florida, or elderly who get both medicaid and medicare, and the children needed dental care but there were no providers.
More employers are disallowing use and/or increasing patient co-pays of Wegovy and other weight loss meds.
After its costs for the drugs more than tripled over the past 18 months to about $5 million a month, the University of Texas System said it would end insurance coverage of Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy and Saxenda for its employees and others covered by its health plans effective Sept. 1.
Continuing to pay for the medicines “is unsustainable due to the current rate of prescription drug expenditures,” said a university benefits newsletter.
Ascension Healthcare, which operates nonprofit and Catholic hospitals and other health facilities in several states primarily in the Midwest and the South, stopped covering anti-obesity drugs including Wegovy and Saxenda for its health plan members July 1. The exclusion also applies to older weight-loss drugs such as phentermine.
Full article here, gift link: Employers Cut Off Access to Weight-Loss Drugs for Workers - WSJ
Powerful Wegovy data today showing long-term cardiovascular benefits, this will put pressure on payers and employers to cover it.
The weight loss drug Wegovy was shown to reduce the risk of heart attack, stroke or heart disease-related death by 20% in a major clinical trial in people with cardiovascular disease, the first to show a weight loss drug alone can have such protective effects.
Novo Nordisk studied Wegovy against placebo in addition to standard of care for prevention of major adverse cardiac events in 17,604 adults with heart disease and obesity or who were overweight, but who didn’t have diabetes. It called the five-year trial “Select.”
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/08/health/wegovy-heart-trial/index.html
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I saw that too, very interesting. Was wondering if weight loss from traditional methods also resulted in 20% risk reduction.
Effects of Different Weight Loss Approaches on CVD Risk - PubMed and https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/full/10.1161/CIR.0000000000000973 suggest that other methods of obesity reduction also reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.
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