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GLP-1s are breaking life insurance

glp1digest.com

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Re: GLP-1s are breaking life insurance

#171

Post by zer00eyz »

hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #23

So... There's a miracle drug powerful enough to robustly lower people's all cause mortality, but since health insurance and life insurance are industries with vastly different time preferences, this is not a good thing for the life insurers because people just keep getting off the magic longevity drug and screwing up their predictions. Because, admittedly, it kind of sucks in the moment to be on. And I'm guessing jus…

> And I'm guessing just based on my own experience paying for term life that the actual premia differences aren't actually enough in most cases for the life insurer to simply pay out of pocket themselves; the differences probably add up to a few hundred per year per customer, whereas a year's worth of a GLP-1 agonist probably costs a couple thousand (for now, in 2025, and probably dropping rapidly).

I wonder why life insurance isnt funding more research into things like metformin, where we have amazing long standing data but haven't done the real research. See: https://www.afar.org/tame-trial

Re: GLP-1s are breaking life insurance

#172

Post by catdog »

aetherson wrote: post #150
dragonwriter wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a maintenance medicine, not a cure, so if people stop taking it, they return to the same problems they had without it.

And it's under-commented upon because it's counterintuitive, but most people stop taking it. Like, two year continuation of use is about 25%. That's kinda wild, because it seems like holy shit if you're taking a drug that lets you drop 10-20% of your body weight from obese down to normal why would you stop taking it, but people do.

Side effects? Also many might not be able to afford it long term as it's quite expensive.

Re: GLP-1s are breaking life insurance

#173

Post by AndrewDucker »

aetherson wrote: post #150
dragonwriter wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a maintenance medicine, not a cure, so if people stop taking it, they return to the same problems they had without it.

And it's under-commented upon because it's counterintuitive, but most people stop taking it. Like, two year continuation of use is about 25%. That's kinda wild, because it seems like holy shit if you're taking a drug that lets you drop 10-20% of your body weight from obese down to normal why would you stop taking it, but people do.

Cost is a big factor. When it becomes generic then I suspect people will stay on it for a lot longer.

Re: GLP-1s are breaking life insurance

#174

Post by 44520297 »

Group_B wrote: post #131
44520297 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which other self-inflicted medical conditions do we deny medical care for?

Good point. The main root cause of obesity is too many calories. Usually, obesity and the symptoms / diseases that come with it improve / go away when eating less calories. Does any human technically need medication to eat less calories?

> Does any human technically need medication to eat less calories?

Chronically obese people, who are prescribed GLP1s to enable them to eat fewer calories. Are you interested in the reasons why people are unable to eat fewer calories without medication? It’s a pretty fascinating problem, one that intersects genetics, environment, and culture.

Re: GLP-1s are breaking life insurance

#175

Post by decimalenough »

aetherson wrote: post #150
dragonwriter wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a maintenance medicine, not a cure, so if people stop taking it, they return to the same problems they had without it.

And it's under-commented upon because it's counterintuitive, but most people stop taking it. Like, two year continuation of use is about 25%. That's kinda wild, because it seems like holy shit if you're taking a drug that lets you drop 10-20% of your body weight from obese down to normal why would you stop taking it, but people do.

Because they're now "normal", so why would they continue paying for it, taking unpleasant injections, and enduring the side effects?

In this sense it's like any diet: they "work", but if you don't permanently modify your food intake, the weight comes back as soon as you go off the diet.

Re: GLP-1s are breaking life insurance

#176

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

ecb_penguin wrote: post #151
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do actually think it's that simple, yes. Term life is just not that complicated a product at heart. Onus is on you to prove that if every single life insurance provider was suddenly Thanos snapped out of existence tomorrow, we wouldn't see a swarm of hungry financial professionals swoop right back in to recreate the service within weeks. That seems like a laughable claim to me, but maybe you know something I don't.…

"the Dunning–Kruger effect is the thesis that those who are incompetent in a given area tend to be ignorant of their incompetence, i.e., they lack the metacognitive ability to become aware of their incompetence. This definition lends itself to a simple explanation of the effect: incompetence often includes being unable to tell the difference between competence and incompetence." I think this very accurately sums up y…

Well jeez, that sounds awful. Thank goodness I've always been great at everything I've done so I never gave to face this.

Re: GLP-1s are breaking life insurance

#177

Post by Sparkle-san »

44520297 wrote: post #89
Sparkle-san wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cheat code was probably not the best term for it, I'll admit. I don't fault anyone for chosing to try GLP-1s and the cause of obeseity isn't particularly on the individual given the prevailance of ultra processed foods and car transportation in our society. That all being said, regaining most, if not all, the weight has been a historical issue around weight loss treatments because they're not durable. The way we're p…

Would you say the same about blood pressure medications, diabetes medications, cholesterol medications, thyroid hormone replacement, antidepressants, mood stabilizers, antipsychotics, anti-anxiety medications, immunosuppressants, DMARDs, corticosteroids, anticonvulsants, Parkinson’s medications, multiple sclerosis treatments, blood thinners, and heart failure medications? All of them set people up for rebound failure…

I wouldn't group those together at all for the sake the argument. Take antidepressants for example. We're at the point of reexamining if we actually understand the consequences of long term usage of them. My personal experience was that my long term usage definitely came with issues and it's taken me a few years to feel like my emotional range has returned to a stabe baseline after going off them. I likely would have been better off using them short term. Depressiom is also quite similar to obesity in the sense that helping people develop the durable non-medical interventions while being treated with drugs would go further than just treating them with drugs alone.

Contrast this with Parkinson's which is a neurodegenerative disease with no known non-pharmacutical treatments and even the pharmacutical ones lose effectiveness as it progresses as they only treat symptoms, not the disease itself.

Re: GLP-1s are breaking life insurance

#178

Post by firesteelrain »

jstummbillig wrote: post #157
cm2187 wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, I tend to notice the effect wears off over time. Not sure it's a good idea to consume it permanently. Perhaps a better use would be for short periods to course correct.

Can you explain what you mean? What you say seems to strictly contradict how the meds are supposed to work.

People find they need to increase to higher tolerable doses to ensure their hunger is satiated. But also, you need to increase your protein and fiber intake to maintain that satiation. I tried going up to 10mg and I had such a sick feeling. 5mg I could tolerate. Some people are up 15mg.

Re: GLP-1s are breaking life insurance

#180

Post by JumpCrisscross »

dragonwriter wrote: post #136
linsomniac wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's a miracle drug powerful enough to robustly lower people's all cause mortality Did I misread the article, my TL;DR of the article is that GLP-1 reduce the indicators or mortality without modifying the actual mortality (because most users return to normal indicators within about 2 years).

It's a maintenance medicine, not a cure, so if people stop taking it, they return to the same problems they had without it.

> if people stop taking it, they return to the same problems they had without it

Source? Everyone I know who stopped taking it rebounded a bit, but not to where they were. And no literature shows 100% rebound to my knowledge.

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