Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

GLP-1s are breaking life insurance

glp1digest.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 640 posts

Re: GLP-1s are breaking life insurance

#231

Post by Spivak »

arp242 wrote: post #215
romaaeterna wrote: post #16

The problem (not new with GLP-1s) is that people lose weight, get life insurance, and then regain. The biggest part of that equation is regain part. Most people quit GLP-1s because of costs. Let's fix that.

Are the long-term (>20 years) effects of taking GLP-1s really all that well understood? Because that's kind of what you're suggesting here. Making millions of people dependent on a drug to maintain basic health does not strike me as the best of ideas regardless. I understand why it's a good idea for many from an individual perspective and I'm not judging anyone, but from a societal perspective it does not seem like a…

Why not? We have an overweight and obesity epidemic that has persisted through everything else we've gotten enough political capital to try thus far. The "miracle" drug is the most promising direction we've had in a long time. Whatever possible adverse long term effects have to be (plausibility they actually happen) x (harm they cause) > known harms of being overweight.

The scale of the solution is allowed to match the scale of the problem which is on the order of 2/3 of adults or 200,000,000 people.

Re: GLP-1s are breaking life insurance

#232

Post by sroussey »

decimalenough wrote: post #175
aetherson wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Another way of putting it is that people achieve their goals and wind down the usage of the drug that got them there.

I think that in a few more years the number may stay at 25% (or whatever) but that the makeup of the 25% may be different. That is, people will go off it and back on it if they see their progress reverse but that will happen to different people at different times.

Re: GLP-1s are breaking life insurance

#233

Post by interestica »

arn3n wrote: post #4

Obesity is highly correlated with other medical conditions, from cancer to diabetes to heart disease. I wonder if there is a point at which it is cheaper for health insurance companies to offer subsidized or even free GLP-1s to patients than pay out for other specialized medications. For example, my insurance covers flu shots in my community every year because it's presumably less expensive to pay for the shots compa…

Fluoridated water? Nah. GLP water.

Re: GLP-1s are breaking life insurance

#234

Post by arp242 »

fnord77 wrote: post #202

> Life insurers can predict when you'll die with about 98% accuracy. I saw this: https://media.nmfn.com/tnetwork/lifespan/index.html#0 is there anything better?

Looking at the link they give for it, the 98% accuracy isn't for individuals but for aggregate data. That is: they can't predict with 98% accuracy when you or I will die, but they can with a sufficiently large group which averages out all the noise. The phrasing in the article is somewhat unfortunate.

Re: GLP-1s are breaking life insurance

#235

Post by paul7986 »

lbrito wrote: post #41
paul7986 wrote: post #17

I believe AI along with smart glasses that shows and calculates your daily caloric intake will be a SUBSTITUTE (another option) to the Ozempics. With AI glasses doing this automatically for you upon seeing what your eating without u having to do anything some people may be shocked to learn how many calories they consume daily. Currently, it's too time consuming now for the majority to do (i use GPT via texting it or…

People with poor restraint will remain unfazed. If what you're suggesting worked, then the horrible cancer pics on cig packs would have long eliminated smoking.

well for those mid level to have strong restraint this is going to be helpful!

I already do this with chatGPT but i have to do something vs. just living and glasses doing it automatically.

Re: GLP-1s are breaking life insurance

#237

Post by make3 »

nerevarthelame wrote: post #120
firesteelrain wrote: post #24

I was on Mounjaro for two months. I was also dieting and walking 10k steps a day. I lost 25 lb and my A1C went down to 5.0 from 5.7. All my cholesterol numbers were in range. I stopped taking it and lost 25 more. I haven’t regained the weight. People who gain it back did not learn the lesson and did not effectively change their habits. You need the discipline - and a good support system. But if you don’t have that an…

This is akin to saying a severely anxious person should be able to take an SSRI for a few months, learn how to change their thinking, and stay off antidepressants for the rest of their life. So simple. Must be their fault if they can't pull it off. Perhaps that works for some people. I'm glad it seems to have worked for you. But the facts of the world we live in show that it doesn't work for most. "Learn the lesson a…

I feel like your example shows the inverse of what you want. SSRI are actually great at helping the person develop healthy mechanisms (compared to GLP-1s), because they reduce the mood swings & negative thoughts, allowing the person to be more productive & be more involved in their therapy, in reading, journaling, doing sports, etc. It's just that it might take two or three years and not months, which is fine because SSRI also have much more limited side effects compared to GLP-1s.

GLP-1s don't do that directly.. but at least they might help people move more, and give them confidence to do more for their health instead of seeing it as a lost cause.

Re: GLP-1s are breaking life insurance

#238

Post by terminalshort »

Aurornis wrote: post #201
Jach wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think GLP-1s are particularly expensive, so my top preference would be to just see them easily available. While not quite the same, it's a win that Rogaine/Minoxidil were once prescription-only but for a long time now can be bought at any grocery store and taken to the self-checkout. Still, I think the subsidy approach has been done for smoking problems via nicotine products before, and e.g. nicotine gum cost…

> I don't think GLP-1s are particularly expensive On-patent GLP-1s (all of them right now) are actually extremely expensive. Right around $1000 per month. I don’t want to discourage anyone who needs them from seeking treatment, but their discontinuation rate can be somewhat higher than you’d think from a life-changing drug because many people don’t like certain effects or even encounter side effects. Weight loss drug…

People who want to misuse the medication are going to be the ones most willing and able to jump through the bureaucratic hoops. Increasing the difficulty to get the medication will only make it more difficult for legitimate users and won't decrease abuse. In 1920, 1970, and now, heroin was legal, illegal with minimal enforcement, and illegal with harsh enforcement (except in SF), and the same percentage of the population was addicted at each time.

Doctors' jobs are to deal with the cases that go wrong. These anecdotes have no relevance without actual data on how often these problems occur.

Re: GLP-1s are breaking life insurance

#239

Post by dboreham »

jstummbillig wrote: post #154
DrillShopper wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi there - Mounjaro user here. I've been using it for about a year at this point. I feel sick for three days in a row after taking it. Even after several months on the same dose. I get horrible gut cramps, sour stomach, near constant nausea, and occasionally vomiting and diarrhea. I have to take my shot on Thursday night because I'll feel bad the next day and supremely sick the next two days. If I took it earlier or…

I mean no offense, but you have a fairly substantiated body of evidence that something in the medication is causing the weight loss. The side effects do sound really shitty though.

These medications don't work in the way many people think. The drug doesn't make you "lose weight" in the sense that it causes the body to excrete fat. Rather it interferes with the constants in the gut/brain signaling/programming system such that your brain doesn't want to eat as much. That in turn leads typically to weight loss.

Re: GLP-1s are breaking life insurance

#240

Post by degamad »

Jimmc414 wrote: post #185

If GLP-1s are working for people, why do they quit taking them?

It is well known that people are bad at taking drugs that work for them. This is particularly well studied when it comes to heart medication, the kind where you take it regularly or you die, and yet adherence is often around 50%.

From a quick search, Jarrah et al. (2023) "Medication Adherence and Its Influencing Factors among Patients with Heart Failure: A Cross Sectional Study" [0] discusses some of the relevant details.

[0] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10224223/

Post reply on HN