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Wegovy’s current list price in the United States is $1,349 per month. Medicare spending on this class of drugs, called GLP-1s, has increased from $57 million in 2018 to $5.7 billion in 2022, while Medicaid spending for these drugs increased from $383 million to $1.8 billion in that time period. A report by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) estimates that treating even half of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries with obesity would cost $166 billion per year, nearly the cost of total spending on all prescription drugs in 2022 ($175 billion).
There is [another] option: CMS could buy Novo Nordisk [the manufacturer] for its current market capitalization value of $606 billion.
Source: STAT (gated)