Weight loss provides Americans with major health care savings

The advent of GLP-1 weight loss drugs such as Wegovy and Zepbound has fueled debate over whether the cost of the drugs should be covered by Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers.

Late last month, the Biden administration proposed covering the drugs under Medicare and Medicaid, a move that would need to be approved by the new Trump administration.

Now data suggests that dramatic weight loss could save Americans a lot of money in health care expenses.

The study found that a 25% weight loss in obese people could save an average of $5,442 per person per year.

That’s a level of weight loss often achieved by GLP-1 users, the study authors noted.

Studies show that “more than one-third of participating adults who are overweight or obese who have the [GLP-1] product lost 20% or more of its body weight,” said a team led by Kenneth Thorpe, professor of health policy at Emory University in Atlanta.

“Improving access to new weight loss medications, along with existing evidence-based behavior change and weight loss interventions, should help reduce health care expenditures related to obesity in the United States,” they wrote.

The findings were published December 5 in the diary JAMA network opened.

As Thorpe’s team noted, in 2020 an estimated 42% of Americans were obese and another 31% were overweight — meaning nearly three-quarters of all adults are not at a healthy body weight.

It is also estimated that obesity-related healthcare costs will cost Americans $385 billion by 2024.

How much could be saved if people lost weight?

To find out, the Emory team looked at average annual health care spending for nearly 3,800 Medicare recipients, as well as more than 13,400 adults, on average about 46 years old, who were covered by employer-sponsored insurance.

The BMIs of everyone in the study were also recorded; all participants had a BMI of 25 or higher (the threshold for obesity is a BMI of 30).

The researchers calculated that even a 5% reduction in body weight could save $670 per year in health care costs for people covered by employer-sponsored plans. Annual savings rose to $2,849 if people lost 25% of their starting weight.

For people enrolled in Medicare who had at least one chronic disease (for example, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, or arthritis), the annual savings for 5% and 25% weight loss were $1,262 and $5,442, respectively.

“The expected annual savings from weight loss among US adults with obesity were significant for both Medicare and employer plans,” Thorpe and colleagues concluded.

They add that their findings “may be of particular interest to employers, health plans and Medicare.”

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