A report from a well-respected nonprofit group may bolster efforts to have Medicare, the largest US purchaser of prescription drugs, cover obesity medicines, for which there has been accumulating evidence of significant benefit.
The Institute for Clinical and Economic Review (ICER) released a report last month on obesity medicines, based on extensive review of research done to date and input from clinicians, drug-makers, and members of the public.
Of the treatments reviewed, the ICER report gave the best ratings to two Novo Nordisk products, a B+ for semaglutide (Wegovy) and a B for liraglutide (Saxenda), while also making the case for price cuts. At an annual US net price estimated at $13,618, semaglutide exceeds what ICER considers typical cost-effectiveness thresholds. ICER suggested a benchmark annual price range for semaglutide of between $7500 to $9800.
The ICER report also directs insurers in general to provide more generous coverage of obesity medicines, with a specific recommendation for the US Congress to pass a pending bill known as the Treat and Reduce Obesity Act of 2021. The bill would undo a restriction on weight-loss drugs in the Medicare Part D plans, which covered about 49 million people last year. Senators Tom Carper (D-DE) and Bill Cassidy, MD, (R-LA) have repeatedly introduced versions of the bill since 2013.
"In both chambers of Congress and with bipartisan support, we've pushed to expand Medicare coverage of additional therapies and medications to treat obesity," Cassidy told Medscape Medical News in an email. "This report confirms what we've worked on for nearly a decade — our legislation will help improve lives."
The current House version of the bill has the backing of more than a third of the members of that chamber, with 113 Democratic and 40 Republican cosponsors. The Senate version has 22 sponsors.
Changing Views
The ICER report comes amid a broader change in how clinicians view obesity.
As Medscape Medical News has reported, the American Academy of Pediatrics is readying a new Clinical Practice Guideline for the Evaluation and Treatment of Pediatric Obesity that will mark a major shift in approach. Aaron S. Kelly, PhD, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Minnesota Medical School, Minneapolis, described it as a "sea change," with obesity now seen as "a chronic, refractory, relapsing disease," for which watchful waiting is no longer appropriate.
But the field of obesity treatment looked quite different in the early 2000s when Congress worked on a plan to add a pharmacy benefit to Medicare.
The deliberate omission of obesity medicine in the Medicare Part D benefit reflected both the state of science at the time and US experience with a dangerous weight-loss drug combo in the late 1990s.
Initial expectations for weight-loss pills were high after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cleared dexfenfluramine HCl (Redux) in 1996, which was part of the popular fen-phen combination. "Newly Approved Diet Drug Promises to Help Millions of Obese Americans — But Is No Magic Bullet," read in a headline about the Redux approval in The Washington Post
When work began in the 2000s to create a Medicare pharmacy benefit, lawmakers and congressional staff had a pool of about $400 billion available to establish what became the Part D program, Joel White, a former House staffer who helped draft the law, told Medscape Medical News in an email exchange.
Given the state of obesity research at the time, it seemed to make sense to exclude weight-loss medications, wrote White. White is now chief executive of the consulting firm Horizon, which has clients in the drug industry including the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA).
"Now we know that obesity is a chronic disease of epidemic proportions. Decades of research have produced a series of advances in the way we understand and treat obesity. While scientists and many who work directly with those impacted by this epidemic understand how treatments have advanced, the law lags behind," White said.
Current payment policies for obesity treatments are based on "outdated information and ongoing misperception," he noted. "While Part D has been a resounding success, our Medicare approach to obesity is not."
"In addition, it makes no sense that Medicare covers the most drastic procedure (bariatric surgery) but not less-invasive, effective treatments," he added. "We should have long ago lifted restrictions based on advances in science and medicine."
Overcoming the Stigma
Scott Kahan, MD, MPH, agreed and hopes that the new ICER report will help more patients secure needed medications, raising a "call to arms" about the need for better coverage of obesity drugs.
Kahan is director of the National Center for Weight and Wellness, a private clinic in Washington, DC, and chair of the clinical committee for The Obesity Society. He also served as a member of a policy roundtable that ICER convened as part of research on the report on obesity drugs. Kahan, who also serves on the faculty at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, has received fees from drug-makers such as Eli Lilly.
The ICER report may help what Kahan described as well-founded caution about obesity treatments in general.
"When it comes to weight loss, there are all of these magical treatments that are sold on social media and traditional media. There are a lot of bad actors in terms of people calling themselves experts and gurus and promising all kinds of crazy stuff," Kahan told Medscape Medical News.
And there are long-standing stigmas about obesity, he stressed.
"That underlies a lot of the backward policies, including poor coverage for medications and the noncoverage by Medicare," Kahan said. "There's a societal ingrained set of beliefs and misperceptions and biases. That takes time to unwind, and I think we're on the way, but we're not quite there yet."
Lifestyle Changes Not Enough to Tackle Obesity
AHIP (formerly America's Health Insurance Plans) told Medscape Medical News its members consider ICER reports when making decisions about which products to cover. "And health plans already cover obesity treatments that they consider medically necessary," said David Allen, an AHIP spokesperson.
"It is important to note that every treatment does not work for every patient, and many patients experience adverse events and may discontinue treatment," he added in an email. "Health insurance providers play an important role in helping [healthcare] providers and patients identify the treatment options that are most likely to be effective as well as affordable."
Separately, the nonprofit watchdog group Public Citizen cautioned against liraglutide on its Worst Pills, Best Pills website. In its view, the drug is minimally effective and has many dangerous adverse effects, which are even more frequent with the higher-dose weight-loss version (a lower-dose version is approved for type 2 diabetes).
"There is currently no medication that can be used safely to achieve weight loss effortlessly and without dangerous adverse effects," the group said. "Rather than focus on losing weight by turning to risky drugs, overweight and obese adults seeking to achieve better health should make reasonable and sustainable changes to their lifestyle, such as eating a healthy diet and getting regular exercise."
Yet, many people find there is little help available for making lifestyle changes, and some patients and physicians say these modifications by themselves are not enough.
"The vast majority of people with obesity cannot achieve sustained weight loss through diet and exercise alone," said David Rind, MD, chief medical officer of ICER, in an October 20 statement. "As such, obesity, and its resulting physical health, mental health, and social burdens, is not a choice or failing, but a medical condition."
The focus should now be on assuring that effective medications "are priced in alignment with their benefits so that they are accessible and affordable across US society," Rind urges.
"My Own Demise With a Fork and Knife"
ICER sought public feedback on a draft version of the report before finalizing it.
In their comments on ICER's work, several pharmaceutical researchers and Novo Nordisk questioned the calculations used in making judgments about the value of obesity drugs. In a statement, Novo Nordisk told Medscape Medical News that the company's view is that ICER's modeling "does not adequately address the real-world complexities of obesity, and consequently underestimates the health and societal impact medical treatments can have."
Commenters also dug into aspects of ICER's calculations, including ones that consider quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs). ICER describes QALY as an academic standard for measuring how well all different types of medical treatments can extend or improve patients' lives. In an explainer on its website, ICER says this metric has served as a fundamental component of cost-effectiveness analyses in the United States and around the world for more than 30 years.
ICER and drug-makers have been at odds for some time, with PhRMA having criticized the nonprofit group. A 2020 Reuters article detailed public relations strategies used by firms paid by drug-makers to raise questions about ICER's work. Critics accuse it of allying with insurers.
ICER's list of its recent financial supporters includes Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts and the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc, but also many other groups, such as the US Department of Veterans Affairs, the American Academy of Neurology, and the American College of Rheumatology.
The public comments on the ICER report also include one from an unidentified woman who wrote of her past struggles to lose weight.
She said her health plan wouldn't cover behavioral programs or semaglutide as a weight-loss drug but did cover it eventually because of signs that she had developed insulin resistance. The patient said the drug worked for her, whereas other approaches to control weight had failed.
"To put it simply, I now experience hunger and satiety in a way that I can only assume people with normal metabolism do. I am 49-years-old and approaching the age where serious comorbidities associated with obesity begin to manifest," the patient wrote.
"I no longer worry about bringing about my own demise with a fork and knife because of misfiring hunger cues."
Kerry Dooley Young is a freelance journalist based in Miami Beach. Follow her on Twitter @kdooleyyoung.
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Cite this: Will ICER Review Aid Bid for Medicare to Pay for Obesity Drugs? - Medscape - Nov 21, 2022.
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