People on Medicare and Medicaid are less likely to get a semaglutide prescription, new research shows Most prescription fills for the weight-loss and diabetes drugs go to people with private insurance Hurdles in the public insurance programs likely cause these disparities WEDNESDAY, Aug. 7, 2024 (HealthDay news) -- Medicare and Medicaid patients are less likely to get cutting-edge weight-loss drugs than people with private insurance are, a new study finds. Medicaid accounted for less than 10% of semaglutide ( , Wegovy) prescription fills in 2023, researchers found.
Similarly, Medicare Part D accounted for less than 29% of Ozempic fills and a little more than 1% of Wegovy fills. “If only certain patient populations get access to these medications -- those primarily with private insurance, more generous health plans -- then there’s a huge percentage of the U.S.
population that isn’t getting access to these medications. And that brings up a very significant equity issue,” said lead researcher , a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southern California's (USC) Center for Health Policy & Economics. For the study, researchers reviewed a pharmaceutical database that captures about 92% of prescriptions filled and dispensed at retail pharmacies in the United States.
Ozempic is a once-weekly semaglutide injection approved for use in treating type 2 diabetes in 2017. A higher-dose version called Wegovy was approved in 2021 specifically for weight loss. Ozempic costs abo.