Almost No One Prescribed Obesity Meds Between 2012 and 2019 Actually Filled Their Scrip

This journal article makes the case -- via analysis of claims data -- that patients almost never fill scripts for obesity medicines. The topline is that 10 of every 11 prescriptions never get picked up by the patient, which is kind of a jaw-dropping number.

Like, less than 10% of people went through the process of going to the doctor, getting a treatment prescribed and then … nothing?

The caveat is that the study looked at claims between 2012 and 2019, so it stops just short of the Ozempic era, and it’s certainly the case that the dominant obesity meds during that period were not show-stoppers. But. Still.

It suggests, at a minimum, that adherence is going to be a major part of the conversation about the new GLP-1 medicines. Because, on the one hand, I would think that effectiveness (and hype) would drive folks to follow through. On the other, we’re talking about expensive, injected products.

At any rate, it probably means that any polls or other predictions you see that predict that a bazillion people will be on these drugs -- or projects sky-high budget impact on that assume -- should be viewed with some caution.

Because though Americans haven’t always liked the idea of weight-loss drugs, actually taking the medicines is not quite as straightforward.

I’m pretty sure this ProPublica story about the fate of GSK’s TB vaccine will be a talker. It’s a long piece centered around the idea that GSK is an unambiguously bad actor in the story.

But then I clicked through to the statement that GSK provided and looked to see if the Gates Foundation -- which now controls the vaccine -- had anything bad to say (they didn’t, at least on the record), and I’m not sure that the narrative here is anywhere close to as cut-and-dried as ProPublica makes it out to be.

Elsewhere:

• If you want a sense of how payers are thinking about controlling oncology costs, this JMCSP study might be useful.

• Merck’s COVID-19 medicine is moving to the commercial market.

• We should all probably be boning up on the Medicare Prescription Payment Plan -- the most important part of the IRA that no one has heard of -- and this Milliman white paper is a good start.