Category Archives: Ozempic

How GLP-1 agonist drugs could change healthcare demand

Posted on by • Posted in Chronic Diseases, Health Insurance Coverage Adequacy, High Deductible Health Plans, High Drug Prices, Life Expectancy, Mounjaro, Obesity, Obesity Treatment, Out of Pocket Expenses, Ozempic, Wegovy, Weight-Related Surgery • Leave a comment

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With more than two in five American adults considered obese, the potential for GLP-1 agonist drugs like Wegovy, Ozempic, and Mounjaro to revolutionize obesity treatment seems limitless.

In the graphic above, we looked to quantify how much these drugs could potentially change healthcare expenditures and demand. Using Wegovy’s list price of $1.3K per month, a GLP-1 drug prescription for every obese American adult would cost as much as $1.3T annually—30 percent of total US healthcare expenditures. 

Analyst projections of GLP-1 drugs forecast revenue to grow by over 5x by 2028, from $3 billion to $16 billion annually. While it’s unlikely that every overweight American will access the drugs, growing use of GLP-1 agonists will likely drive down obesity rates, and downstream care demand could shift in expected and unpredictable ways. Demand for weight-related surgeries, including joint replacements and bariatric surgery, will likely drop. Incidence of chronic diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular disease could also drop, potentially raising life expectancy. 

But even if we’re living longer thanks to the new drugs, we’ll still die of something eventually: expect a secondary rise in cancers and Alzheimer’s, as well as surging demand for eldercare. While these effects will take years to materialize, leaders planning for long-term care needs would be wise to consider scenarios where these and other potential “blockbuster” drugs may disrupt demand patterns and spending for a wide range of services.

Are we on the cusp of a new disruptive era of clinical innovation? 

Posted on by • Posted in Bariatric, Chronic Care Management, Chronic Condition Management, Chronic Conditions, Chronic Diseases, Clinical Innovation, Disruption, Innovation, Innovative Care Models, Outpatient Care, Outpatient Medical Management, Ozempic, Wegovy, Weight Loss • Leave a comment

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At a recent meeting of physician leaders, we sat next to the head of the health system’s bariatric surgery program. Given the recent and rapid uptake of GLP-1 inhibitors like Ozempic and Wegovy, we asked how he thought these drugs, which can generate dramatic weight loss, would affect his practice.

He chuckled, “they’re really good drugs…they could put me out of business! 

It’s too early to say if they’ll be effective over a lifetime, but there’s no doubt they’re going to have a huge impact on our work.” It got us thinking about the other reverberations this class of drugs could have on care needs, if a majority of obese Americans had access to them.


Some effects are obvious.

We could see significant declines in treatment needs for chronic diseases like obesity and heart failure, for which obesity is a strong risk factor. Given that obese patients are much more likely to need joint replacement surgery, we could see a big hit to that demand—although some patients who are poor candidates for surgery because of weight-related complications could become eligible.

Even longer-term, if American’s aren’t dying of chronic disease, we’ll still die of something, so expect diseases of advanced age, like Alzheimer’s and many cancers, to increase. Other pharmaceutical innovations, like the growth of immunotherapy and more targeted cancer treatments, also have the potential to radically alter how disease is managed.

We may be at the beginning of another wave of disruptive medical innovation on the order of the introduction of statins in the 1990s, which combined with minimally invasive catheterization, slashed the need for bypass surgery.

Given their sky-high prices, it’s too soon to tell how quickly the use of these new obesity drugs will grow, but innovations like these will serve to pull more care out of hospitals and into less invasive outpatient medical management.