Research
Energy balance
Allowing Medicare coverage of anti-obesity medications could increase annual Part D costs by $3.1 billion or $6.1 billion depending on the percentage of newly eligible patients prescribed the drugs.
Practitioners should be aware of the potential financial implications of Medicare coverage for anti-obesity medications.
StrongSupportsmedium confidence
Assuming that anti-obesity drugs were covered in 2025 and that 5 percent or 10 percent of newly eligible patients were prescribed one, annual Part D costs were estimated to increase by $3.1 billion or $6.1 billion, respectively.
Why this rating
The claim is based on a cost analysis using Medicare claims data.
Source
Expanding Medicare Coverage Of Anti-Obesity Medicines Could Increase Annual Spending By $3.1 Billion To $6.1 Billion
Benedic Ippolito et al. · Health Affairs · 2024
DOI 10.1377/hlthaff.2024.00356
otherCited 12×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- The marginal costs of Medicare coverage for anti-obesity drugs could decrease by up to 62.5% if products are approved for additional indications.Strong
- The policy change of covering anti-obesity medications is likely to increase Medicare costs by low to middle tens of billions of dollars over ten years.Strong
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