The drugs do not reduce mortality much or even at all. Such drugs may improve quality of life though. Except for severe obesity, 40+ BMI, life expectancy is not lowered much in men and even less in women in the setting of obesity. It's just that being obese makes all sorts of markers worse, yet people do not die much sooner. It's more about improving quality of life.
Except for extreme obesity, it is about the same as people not on the drugs . Even moderate obesity only lowers life expectancy by a few years in men and about none in women. of course, quality of life will may be worse. Obesity only meaningfully lowers life expectancy at a BMI of 40-45+ for men
1-2 years ago there was considerable skepticism about "taking the easy way out" or unforeseen risks like like with Fenfluramine/phentermine. Now sentiment has changed given that more people realize these drugs are safe and effective.
They can predict it in the sense most people will die within some specified window in which the insurer makes a profit. This is why its so profitable for the insurer. They have a very wide window where it's profitable and the vast majority of people, 98%, fall within this window. .
More sensationalism. Insurers can simply adjust the policy accordingly to account for patients discontinuing the drug. They can also raise premiums if patients go off the drug, and there can be a cluse that stipulates this. This is literally the job of an actuary to reprice premiums . Insurers take a short-term hit and then adjust premiums to ensure it never happens again. This happened with California fire risk for example. Moreover, this drug will not increase life expectancy by that much even with lifetime patient compliance. The majority of obese people ,especially men, who take these drugs will still be overweight or obese, but just not as much as before.
The idea is that the insurer doesn't even know the customer is on glp1, and I guess doesn't require a full physical often enough to reprice frequently.
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