The Obesity Storylines Are Getting Played Out ... But Here Are 3 Pieces Still Worth Your Time

It’s kind of a quiet Monday, at least in the health policy world. Could be that it’s a holiday. It could be that our attention is focused on the horrific events unfolding in Israel. Could be that other biopharma news -- the BMS-Mirati deal feels important -- is sucking up some of the oxygen.

I worry that we will soon -- if we haven’t already -- run out of things to say about obesity medicines. Coverage is focused on trends that feel particularly thin, especially when it comes to the second-order impact of wider adoption (less jet fuel! slimmer Slim Jims!).

“The food industry is getting its version of ‘Amazon is coming for the pharmacies’ moment,” Endpoints’ Drew Armstrong wrote on Twitter, a reference to over-heated journalism and share-price swings based on hype that is unconnected to reality.

Still, I’d argue that not everything being written is empty calories, informationally. I tried to look ahead to real-world political implications in my LinkedIn column over the weekend … I think that obesity politics could absolutely be a thing, and I wanted to put a marker down there.

And Endpoints had a couple of thoughtful pieces on items from last week. They covered the CBO blog post on the economics of obesity well, and this look at the AEI net-price figures for obesity meds was far deeper than I expected, going beyond the numbers to look at competition and demand.

• Love the headline on this Economist takedown of the insurance industry: “Who profits most from America’s baffling health-care system? Hint: it isn’t big pharma.”

• California Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed an effort to cap insulin prices at $35, claiming that insurers would just hike premiums and, besides, the state is making its own biosimilars. I’m not sure that either of those are great reasons to override unanimous votes by the legislature.

• I’m a bit amused -- if not a bit bemused -- by the Japanese government’s belief that new drugs aren’t being introduced in Japan because the regulatory path to approval is too hard, as laid out in this Bloomberg newsletter. Seems to me (as pointed out by Bloomberg), that a reimbursement system that starts with low prices and then continually pushes them down might not be ideal for access.

• Creagh Milford, CVS’s senior vice president of retail health, was asked at the HLTH conference about the Blue Shield of California’s move to boot PBMs (kind of, sort of) from benefits administration. Milford’s response, in essence: you’re going to miss us when we’re gone.