alt Hacker News>On the insurance front - expect your insurance to decline this forever unless you are at serious risk of diabetes.
I'm not understanding this part. If these drugs have solved obesity and the whole host of associated diseases, including the number one killer; heart disease, shouldn't the insurance companies be clambering over each other to cover these drugs and heavily encouraging their use considering the cost reduction on the overall health system.
And if the incentives are misaligned with insurance companies why are governments not handing out GLP-1s to anyone who asks?
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Your employer (large employers usually dictate what is covered by their insurance benefit offerings) may not care much about whether you end up with obesity-related diseases in your 60s and above.
>why are governments not handing out GLP-1s to anyone who asks?
Governments require consensus, which makes them slow. It took decades to phase out leaded gasoline.
For chronic diseases that tend to be caused by obesity, the expensive bits tend to be towards retirement aged people - or are so disabling that people drop out of the workforce early.
In either case the vast majority of those costs will be incurred by either Medicare or Medicaid. Or at least the next insurer in line as the typical worker doesn’t spend an entire career at the same firm with the same insurance provider.
By the time any cost savings benefits have been realized (call it a decade later), chances are that insured patient is long gone and all they were was an additional expense.
By the time government gets involved you have someone who has been obese all their life and the damage is largely already done. Even if you paid for the meds now, the savings are limited.
Given the market already though - these drugs will be affordable to the average working person within a few years