“Access to obesity drugs is sad in this country,” said Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity medicine specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School.
But even if the patient’s insurer will cover weight loss drugs, most doctors do not offer the drugs and most patients do not want them because they do not realize there are good treatment options, said Dr. Scott Kahan, an obesity medicine specialist in Washington. And he added that even if doctors and patients knew there were FDA-approved drugs, many thought they were “unsafe or poorly studied and that everyone was regaining their weight.”
The medical system bears much of the blame, Dr. Stanford said. Only 1% of physicians in the United States are trained in obesity medicine. “This is the biggest chronic disease of our time and no one is learning about it,” she said.
Data on drug use by patients precede newer, more effective and safer drugs manufactured by Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly. However, obesity doctors say they suspect that their numbers have changed a lot from earlier studies, which found that less than 1 percent of eligible people received one of these drugs. This is about the same percentage as those who receive bariatric surgery, which most insurers, including Medicare, pay for.
“The perception is, ‘If you’re heavy, get off the straps and try harder,'” Dr. Kahan said.
And that, he added, is a perception shared by many patients, as well as doctors, that makes them reluctant to seek medical help or prescription drugs.
Add Comment