Rate of employers covering weight-loss drugs is flat, Cigna says

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By Sriparna Roy

(Reuters) -Cigna said on Wednesday the percentage of employers paying for obesity drugs has remained flat year-over-year, though the health insurer still sees an uptick in demand for the wildly popular treatments.

More than 50% of its Evernorth unit’s clients, a group that includes large employers and health plans, cover the drugs for weight management, Chief Financial Officer Brian Evanko said at the Morgan Stanley Healthcare Conference.

Within Cigna Healthcare, its health benefits only segment, which caters more to smaller employers, only about 15% to 20% of clients offer coverage of the medications, he said.

While there is a lot of interest among employers, the steep price of the highly effective newer GLP-1 drugs Wegovy from Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly’s Zepbound has been a hurdle for access.

“Some of the employers we cover have higher rates of turnover on their employee base, and so they have questions about whether they’ll see the return or whether the return will be the benefit of a different employer in the future,” Evanko said.

Still, demand for the obesity drugs remains high, because even with the same percentage of employers, more people are using the medications, he added.

U.S. employers cite these drugs and rising healthcare services costs as the reasoning behind expectations that they will need to cut benefits to keep monthly premiums for employer-based health insurance to an increase of 6% or 7% in 2026 as total costs rise 9%.

In May, Cigna said it will cap out-of-pocket costs at $200 per month for patients using the weight-loss drugs Wegovy and Zepbound through an add-on to its pharmacy benefit management plans.

The drugs have list prices that reach $1,000 but are available for about half that or less on the manufacturers’ websites.

(Reporting by Sriparna Roy in Bengaluru; Editing by Alan Barona)