How much slimming drugs should cost, such as Wegova and Zepbound?

It is straightforward to justify hit slimming drugs, such as Wegova and Zepbound, which have shown that they prevent heart attacks and impact and save lives.

But for employers and government programs asking you to pay for medicines, the financial matter is less clear to them. Are drug benefits worth their huge costs?

The answer is not now, according to New study Published on Friday in the Jama Health Forum journal, by scientists from the University of Chicago.

Scientists summed up that it should be considered profitable according to the common measure used by health economists, the price of Wegovya Novo Nordisk would have to be reduced by over 80 percent to USD 127 per month. And Zepbound Eli Lilly would only be profitable if its price dropped by almost a third, to USD 361 per month. (Zepbound justified the higher price, as scientists say, because it brought more benefits in clinical trials).

“There is no doubt that drugs have huge health benefits,” said David Kim, a health economist at the University of Chicago and the senior author of the study, who was financed by government subsidies. “The problem is that the price is too high.”

There is widespread hope that medicines will effectively pay for themselves in the long run, making healthier patients and preventing pricey medical accounts. It is not clear yet whether this will turn out to be true.

Eli Lilly rejected the results of a modern study, arguing that he ignored the results of several clinical trials in which the company showed benefits. Instead, he used a “confined set of data to draw wide conclusions,” said Courtney Kasinger, a spokeswoman for the company. And Liz Skrbkova, a spokeswoman for Novo Nordisk, said that “there are no universally accepted thresholds, which determines the drug that is profitable.”

Employers and government programs pay different prices for drugs, and these numbers are almost always secret. Scientists from the University of Chicago estimated the price for Wegova at 700 USD per month, compared to $ 520 for Zepbound.

The huge demand for drugs meant that the costs of employers’ drugs were a balloon, which prompted some companies to impose restrictions on who can get them or completely stop medicine. Con Edison, an energy utility that serves Up-to-date York and Westchester, said recently to raise the rates to balance the increased expenses that included an raise in expenditure on slimming drugs.

Medicare includes drugs in patients with diabetes and a much smaller number of people who fight both obesity and other health, such as a heart problem or sleep apnea. Congress relied on the extension of insurance for millions of elderly people who are overweight or obesity because it would be so pricey.

Patients who pay for drugs, using their own money instead of going through insurance, have different prices; Some pay over 1300 USD per month. But for a low dose of Zepbound, patients can pay USD 350 Not from the pocket price that scientists from the University of Chicago considered profitable.

To come up with their estimates, scientists carried out computer simulations of what could happen if people who were overweight or obese took one of the drugs for the rest of their lives. Based on the results of clinical trials, the model forecasted benefits that can be calculated in the long run. For example, many overweight patients would never become obese. Other patients would avoid diabetes or heart disease. Others productive and outside the hospital.

These benefits have achieved many years of good health-such as years of life corrected by quality. Many health economists believe that society is reasonable to pay $ 100,000 for every such robust year. But in the model of the summer of good health provided by Wegova and Zepbound, they cost much more.

Pharmaceutical companies often move violently in relation to such analyzes of profitability, saying that they do not capture the real value that drugs can bring to patients and societies. Despite this, they sometimes finance such tests. Some Analysis financed by Novo NordiskLike scientists from the University of Chicago, he decided that the drug for slimming is profitable.