Employees at multinational organisations increasingly expect their employer to provide weight loss injections but this is causing significant healthcare cost concern for organisations, especially in the US.
Speaking at Health & Protection’s IPMI Summit Kelly McCain, director of international expansion at Business Group on Health, highlighted the rapid uptake of weight loss injections using GLP1 inhibitors such as Mounjaro and Ozempic.
Cost of treatment
McCain (pictured) revealed that her organisation had received a lot of feedback from multinationals in the US about the cost of covering these medications.
“This is mostly in the context of the US where they are cost conscious and stretching budgets to the brink,” McCain explained.
“We have seen projections from some of our multinational employers that it would absolutely wipe them out financially if they continued to cover at the rate they are covering for the next five years.
“And while that is an issue predominantly in the US, we’ve seen an increase in conversations and lots of questions asked to us by our multinational employers that sit in different markets of what’s going to be our role in thinking through what we provide?
“And who’s going to help us navigate the GLP1 market as expectations are shifting?”
Bigger access
Picking up the subject again in a subsequent question and answer session, McCain explained access to these treatments is also growing in importance.
“What we’re hearing, especially from employees in multinationals in the UK, is it’s a combination of bigger access,” McCain said.
“So going to the private market to jump the waiting list or get it prescribed.
“The second piece is employee expectation, so there were a lot of situations where peers in Europe find out that their employers are covering GLP1s in the US, and there is an expectation that they are going to provide it for them too.
“And then the third piece is monitoring and ensuring that employees are sticking to the regimen,” she concluded.
