So far there is no indication insurance companies are going to pay for 100 million Americans going on Ozempic who aren't diabetic...
Anecdotally, another danger is people confusing less eating with a healthy diet. I know someone on Ozempic...eats less but what is eaten is the same old junk...
This is a big claim to assert without evidence. If it was the case then insurers would already be adding the drugs to their formularies.
There is undoubtedly a cost associated with obesity but you are suggesting that simply being overweight doubles the average cost of care[1], a figure that already includes overweight and obese people (which are of course a huge population in the US).
A quick Google search turned up a report[2] that suggests that
> This estimated public cost equates to an average marginal cost of $175 per year per adult for a one unit change in BMI for each adult in the U.S. population.
So, even for the extreme case of a very obese person that has a very successful treatment and goes from 40 BMI to 25 BMI, you are only saving a hypothetical $2,625 per year (perhaps an underestimate due to inflation and the age of the paper).
Therefore it would appear that unless insurers strike a deal with the drug companies (lower the price, make it up in volume), such a law would dramatically increase insurance premiums. A better compromise would be a law which requires insurance companies to offer co-insurance on these drugs up to the expected savings.
[1] https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2023/01/why-are-americans-paying-m....
[2] https://vinecon.ucdavis.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/cwe12...
American healthcare system has perverse incentivizes. Most unhealthy groups are generally least likely to be privately insured, so insurers are incentivized to prioritize health issues affecting working-age adults, while neglecting those which will be someone's else concern in future.
What’s the cost/benefit of weight loss and diabetes control vs $12k/year? I would expect people with high obesity are very expensive to insure and insurance can’t drop people any more. It may be cheaper to pay for ozempic (especially at whatever negotiated rate insurance pays) than to pay for the alternative negative health outcomes.
That and ozempic goes generic in 2031 and mounjaro in 2027 so soon this won’t be a question of $1000/month but maybe $1000/year at which point insurers will probably force customers to take it or pay higher rates.
$12k is going to be less than the typical admission to a hospital (for injury, illness, heart disease, diabetes related incident.)
There is anecdotal evidence that eating less is, in itself, so much more healthy that it doesn't really matter what you eat. Nutrition professor Mark Haub ate nothing but "convenience store food" for 10 weeks at a caloric deficit and all of his health metrics improved while he lost 27lbs.
http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/...
One month supply us about £135 which is about $170 at todays rate.