{"id":23980,"date":"2025-03-14T14:00:05","date_gmt":"2025-03-14T15:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=23980"},"modified":"2025-03-14T15:35:17","modified_gmt":"2025-03-14T15:35:17","slug":"how-much-should-weight-loss-drugs-like-wegovy-and-zepbound-cost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=23980","title":{"rendered":"How Much Should Weight Loss Drugs Like Wegovy and Zepbound Cost?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A new study found that fair prices for medications like Wegovy and Zepbound would be hundreds less per month than they are now.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s easy to make a medical case for blockbuster weight loss drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound, which have been shown to prevent heart attacks and strokes and save lives.<\/p>\n

But for the employers and government programs being asked to pay for the medications, the financial case for them is less clear. Are the drugs\u2019 benefits worth their enormous cost?<\/p>\n

The answer right now is no, according to a new study<\/a> published on Friday in the journal JAMA Health Forum, by researchers at the University of Chicago.<\/p>\n

To be considered cost effective by a common measure used by health economists, the price of Novo Nordisk\u2019s Wegovy would need to be cut by over 80 percent, to $127 per month, the researchers concluded. And Eli Lilly\u2019s Zepbound would be cost effective only if its price fell by nearly a third, to $361 per month. (Zepbound warranted a higher price, the researchers said, because it produced greater benefits in clinical trials.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThere\u2019s no doubt that the drugs are demonstrating tremendous health benefits,\u201d said David Kim, a health economist at the University of Chicago and the senior author of the study, which was funded by government grants. \u201cThe problem is the price is too high.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s widespread hope that the drugs will effectively pay for themselves in the long run, by making patients healthier and preventing expensive medical bills. It\u2019s not clear yet whether that will turn out to be true.<\/p>\n

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A new study found that fair prices for medications like Wegovy and Zepbound would be hundreds less per month than they are now.It\u2019s easy to make a medical case for blockbuster weight loss drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound, which have been shown to prevent heart attacks and strokes and save lives.But for the employers and government programs being asked to pay for the medications, the financial case for them is less clear. Are the drugs\u2019 benefits worth their enormous cost?The answer right now is no, according to a new study published on Friday in the journal JAMA Health Forum, by researchers at the University of Chicago.To be considered cost effective by a common measure used by health economists, the price of Novo Nordisk\u2019s Wegovy would need to be cut by over 80 percent, to $127 per month, the researchers concluded. And Eli Lilly\u2019s Zepbound would be cost effective only if its price fell by nearly a third, to $361 per month. (Zepbound warranted a higher price, the researchers said, because it produced greater benefits in clinical trials.)\u201cThere\u2019s no doubt that the drugs are demonstrating tremendous health benefits,\u201d said David Kim, a health economist at the University of Chicago and the senior author of the study, which was funded by government grants. \u201cThe problem is the price is too high.\u201dThere\u2019s widespread hope that the drugs will effectively pay for themselves in the long run, by making patients healthier and preventing expensive medical bills. It\u2019s not clear yet whether that will turn out to be true.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23982,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23980"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23980\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23983,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23980\/revisions\/23983"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}