“I feel blessed to get Wegovy weight-loss jab” – but can the NHS afford it for all?

25 comments

1. It’s not even a particuarly expensive treatment. Why not if it saves money in the long run?

2. Stopping bad health outcomes in the long term rather than reacting to people getting fatter and unhealthier should be the NHS’ MO.

   Faster rollout needed. Take some budget from people who think banning fast food adverts makes a difference.

3. Here is an idea: tax the fast food companies and the sugary drinks companies and fund the drug. It’s only fair. But don’t just fund the drug: make sure people have healthier options to eat and teaches them how to cook easy meals that are full of protein.

4. These drugs are worth the cost. Diabetes is very expensive. So is treatment for strokes, heart attacks, limb removal etc.

5. If giving people these injections works out cheaper for the NHS in long run then I’m all for it.

6. If they meet the criteria then they should be prescribed it and referred to a nutritionist for the future.

   Obese people cost the NHS so much and have lots of overlap in areas like Respiratory, Cardiology, orthopedics & Diabetes.

   It’s definitely a long term solution that Gp’s should be able to prescribe. The initial financial outlay should be recouped in the future (although it’ll probably just be swallowed up by the lack of investments and growing populus)

7. Question for me is can the NHS afford not to prescribe it to everyone? If ever there was an example of preventative medicine, surely this is it? 

8. We really aught to be demanding that the pharma companies that own the patents build factories in the UK, slash the price and pump this stuff out en-mass. We could even do it as a joint partially funded government venture.

   If they refuse – declare a health emergency, revoke the patents and find a company that will. Obesity costs the UK over £100bn A YEAR. If the government was serious about improving people’s lives and growing the economy, solving obesity should be at the heart of their strategy.

   Instead we are letting pharma companies artificially hold back supply, force up demand and profiteer from a relatively cheap drug to produce.

9. If you get it private it works out at £200 a month. Cause that’s what I’m about to sign up for next week. I can afford it, just about, and I reason to myself the money I save from not eating junk food will go towards it. But for me it’s not to fix my problems but to help me on the way; did you know gym equipment for homes has weight limits on it? I am desperate for an under the desk treadmill so I can walk as I do my work, and an exercise bike, and something like pelton and their scoreboards tickle my competitiveness. But nope, too fat. So hopefully I can lose a bit with monjarou so I can get my equipment. My fat identity stemmed from quitting a 30 a day smoking habit, replacing one bad habit with another. Ooops.

   I don’t begrudge people getting it for free, even when I’m paying, but if it does start taking chunks out of other things the NHS provides, such as mental health resources, then I would ask if there’s an alternative perhaps.

10. Yes the NHS. Removing obesity, or reducing it could be a major win.

    It’s going to save millions, even billions in the long run.

11. Morbidly obese man trying to be not be morbidly obese here. Yes, it’s worth the cost to stop the later costs of heart attacks and the like

12. The cost of obesity to the NHS is so high….we should 100% be getting people on wegovy. Not just those super obese already but those that need help from getting there in the first place.

    BUT!!!

    It must come with a dietician and if possible psychological support to challenge the ‘why’ people over eat else wegovy will become a life long addiction for people who will fall back into bad habits when it stops.

    So what do I know….this is exactly my journey. Wegovy helps weight loss…it does not fix the underlying causes. Taking wegovy is super easy…fixing the ‘why’ that requires the work

13. In the last few years the issue with people smoking could be considered “solved” because of vapes and nicotine replacement options. Smoking numbers have plummeted.
    So that is smoking related heart disease and COPD admissions and co-morbidities dropping off.

    The next burden on the NHS is obesity.
    This range of drugs could take care of that as well.

    It’ll be fun to see the anti-vax crew (overrepresented in the obese demographic) have to resolve this jab that provides life changing improvements to health and body image, with their beliefs.
    My bet is they’ll be quiet on it.

    Couldn’t come soon enough imo.

14. Would be interesting to see how this compares cost wise to the Meal replacement diet the NHS was doing for some people. Google AI says it costs about £1100 a year per person, so 50% cheaper than this jab, but idk how accurate that is. Maybe a mix of the two, the jab used for people with more health issues, and the meal plan kept for those in pre diabetes stages.

    It’s clear that simply going on a diet isn’t working for a lot of people, as easy as it should be in theory. If we could get this sorted then maybe more money could go towards figuring out why so many healthy people are getting cancer so young and fix that.

15. Fat people will do anything other than put down the fork I swear to god

16. A proactive health system should be cheaper for the country in the long term. The cost of people being sick, out of work and not productive is high and disruptive to many families, the knock-on health problems are a drag on the health system. We should be doing more proactive health care.

17. It should be offered to obese people on the NHS, it’ll get them into a healthy weight range which will decrease medical costs in future and increase quality of life – perfect

    They’re relatively new drugs that may offer the ability to remain on them for life, time will tell

    Lots of different versions getting released, each one being improved and less side effects

    Going private is also another option or the blackmarket, it’s everywhere

18. The one thing I see missing from the conversation is that part of the protocol for taking it requires exercise and management to go with it. There needs to be a framework for getting the people receiving it into fitness programmes too.

19. You make a compelling point about the importance of proactive measures in public health. Focusing on prevention rather than just reacting to health outcomes can have a much more sustainable impact on the population’s well-being.

    Investing in long-term health initiatives, such as education on nutrition, access to healthy foods, and promoting active lifestyles, can help address the root causes of obesity and related health issues. While measures like banning fast food advertisements might seem beneficial, they often fall short without comprehensive support and infrastructure.

    Redirecting resources toward more effective public health strategies could help the NHS tackle these challenges more effectively. What specific initiatives do you think should be prioritized to improve overall health outcomes?

20. Another point to consider. Alcohol. Alcohol causes a lot of health issues, not to mention violence and crime. Wegovy/Ozempic reduces the patients interest in alcohol. They just don’t want to drink. So that’s another massive win. Health improved and violence down. A fortune saved.

21. The long term impacts to this are going to be brutal… I know so many people getting these in their 20s and just injecting.. this quick fix with minimal effort is a problem.
    Truly you might be unlucky and gain weight quicker than others but in that unfortunate case you need to then eat less than others and exercise..
    100 years ago people with those genetics existed and they weren’t overweight. But everybody will complain, I’m being awful! Not their fault etc etc

22. The NHS should be making this available to people in the overweight but not yet obese category on the grounds that spending now to prevent greater, more complex, much more costly problems later is a fucking no brainer

23. > he was told he would probably need to take the drug all his life

    This is it – this is the sting in the tail of “but it reduces the cost of obesity”.

    For **most** people it will be something they need to either take continuously all their lives, or that they bounce on and off all the time.

    It’s not a cheap drug.

    And we don’t know what the long term health effects are going to be.

24. There are lots of issues in the food environment that’s different from many years ago. Obesity keeps increasing and we’re all still human with pretty much exactly the same genes as before but people were a lot thinner. Companies have scientifically formulated so many forms of the same junk food additives to addict us through mouth feel and taste, hormones triggers and more but minimised satiety, their purpose is not to healthily feed people efficiently, it’s to sell the most items and take the most market share. There needs to be a rewrite of the rules of these foods, once they get their hooks into people through ease etc. they take up more and more calories of people’s diets away from real healthy, home made food with real, whole ingredients.

    It’s also more difficult because work has changed, there used to be a second person at home being able to make whole food recipes. I don’t want us to to go back to those outdated roles but for everyone to have less time at work and not have to play catch up with home life. Working 9 to 5 used to be the most common work times, now it’s 9 to 6 or 8:30 to 5:30. We need to crawl these hours back and get to something like 9 to 4.

    This turned into a long rant, I hope someone, somewhere finds this rambling interesting.

25. Dont these jabs come with quite a severe cancer risk?

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