Overweight treatment – health insurance companies cover the costs of Wegovy weight loss injections
by BezugssystemCH1903
Overweight treatment – health insurance companies cover the costs of Wegovy weight loss injections
by BezugssystemCH1903
4 comments
>- In addition to Ozempic and Saxenda, Wegovy is another weight loss injection that has conquered Switzerland. Health insurance companies will cover the costs from March 2024.
>- Because more and more people are relying on such injections to lose weight, there have been supply bottlenecks for diabetics. Wegovy should ease the situation.
>- Additional costs in the millions are expected for health insurance companies.
>Ozempic, Saxenda and Wegovy are drugs that you can inject yourself with a pen. They were initially developed for diabetics. As they reduce appetite, they also help with weight loss. As a result, more and more people wanted to be treated with these “weight loss wonders”. As a result, there was an increasing shortage of medication for diabetics.
>Since March 2024, Swiss health insurance companies have now been paying for another product, Wegovy. According to Gabriela Giacometti from the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH), this should ease the situation for diabetics: “It can be assumed that in future, Saxenda and Wegovy will be prescribed for the treatment of severe obesity and no longer Ozempic. This means that the situation for diabetics being treated with Ozempic should improve.”
>__Higher costs for health insurance companies__
>In Switzerland, only people who are severely or very severely overweight receive a prescription for a slimming injection. They also undertake to follow a diet and exercise in addition to the drug treatment. According to the FOPH, eleven to 13 percent of adults are severely overweight. Treatment with such medication costs around CHF 190 per month.
>Giacometti expects higher costs for basic insurance. While the FOPH representative speaks of cost implications in the region of 100 million francs, Matthias Müller from the health insurance association Santésuisse assumes at least three times as much. “We expect additional costs of at least CHF 300 million per year if only two percent of all adults take Wegovy, and that doesn’t even include doctors and other treatment costs.”
>It remains to be seen whether lower costs could be incurred in the future because fewer people suffer from secondary diseases caused by obesity. According to Lucia Winzap, lecturer in nutrition and dietetics at the Bern University of Applied Sciences, this hope is indeed realistic. For example, the FOPH already has sufficient data in the field of obesity surgery to prove that weight reduction greatly reduces secondary diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, heart attacks, diabetes mellitus, musculoskeletal disorders and cancer.
Cross finance it with a sugar tax and put the rest into education about healthy feed and basic biology and this measure won’t be needed in 20-30 years anymore.. or dont and raise premiums again instead.
They surely cover this. Alright…
But they won’t cover my contact lenses or my dentist.
😡
This is only fpr people who are extremely obese, so I tend to be on board with this, especially since the alternative is used for diabetes treatment. That being said, this should not be anything but a last resort