Global payer attitudes influencing the future of obesity and GLP-1 drugs

It’s no secret that obesity is a public health crisis. Roughly 2.5 billion adults worldwide are overweight, and almost 900 million live with obesity. The condition is responsible for hundreds of complications and comorbidities, fueling significant cost. But a new era is upon us with the dawn of glucagon-like peptide-1s (GLP-1s).

While these drugs have helped millions of people achieve and maintain a healthy weight, access to them remains restricted across the world.

With analysts projecting the market for weight management drugs to reach $150 billion annually, we surveyed global payers to understand:

• What they believe about the underlying causes of obesity and how these beliefs may inform their coverage decisions
• The challenges they face with current obesity treatments and what future hurdles they expect
• If they plan to cover these drugs—and, if so, how
• How much they would be willing to spend to offer broad access to GLP-1s across different patient populations

To explore these topics, we conducted 60-minute interviews with between three and five payers from the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Turkey, Brazil and China. We also conducted an online quantitative survey of 28 U.S. payers.

FIGURE: How much global payers say they’re willing to pay for GLP-1s

Read the white paper