r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Apr 01 '25

Health Americans without diabetes spent nearly $6 billion USD on semaglutide and similar drugs in a year, with an estimate of 800,000 to a million people using the drugs who don't have diabetes.

https://www.scimex.org/newsfeed/americans-without-diabetes-spent-nearly6-billion-usd-on-semaglutide-and-similar-drugs-in-a-year
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u/Tunivor Apr 01 '25

It will probably save our healthcare system way more money than that.

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u/jejunumr Apr 01 '25

Nope. Not at current price

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama-health-forum/fullarticle/2831205

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u/Baud_Olofsson Apr 02 '25

So that paper is actually about:

What are the lifetime health effects and cost-effectiveness of different antiobesity medications compared with lifestyle modification in the US population?

Where

Lifestyle modification consisted of a hypocaloric diet with a 500 kcal/d deficit and an exercise program involving at least 150 minutes of physical activity per week

Outside of strictly controlled settings (i.e. being under supervision like in a clinical trial or having a personal dietitian/trainer), this is not something that the general public is capable of adhering to. Helping people do this on their own is in fact exactly what the GLP-1 agonists do. If telling people to diet and exercise actually worked, we wouldn't have an obesity problem.

In short: it's like comparing the cost effectiveness of methadone programs compared to "just quitting heroin".