A popular warehouse club has partnered with a healthcare marketplace to offer eligible members a cheaper way to lose weight through blockbuster weight loss drugs.
Costco and Sesame revealed a new service through which individuals can pay $179 for a three-month weight loss program. The specific treatment regime will be decided on a patient-by-patient basis in consultation with a clinician, meaning that members can be prescribed GLP-1 weight-loss drugs if it is medically appropriate.
“We are witnessing important innovations in medically-supervised weight loss,” said David Goldhill, Sesame’s co-founder and CEO, per a news release. “Sesame’s unique model allows us not only to make high-quality specialty care like weight loss much more accessible and affordable, but also to empower clinicians to create care plans that are specific to — and appropriate for — each individual patient.”
GLP-1 drugs are injectable medications — including Ozempic, Mounjaro, Wegovy, Zepbound, and more — that suppress the appetite by mimicking a naturally occurring hormone that increases insulin sensitivity and delays stomach emptying. They have proven effective at helping obese individuals drop weight, leading to a surge in sales these past years. Revenue reached an all-time high of $90 billion last year, per market reports.
Obesity experts touting GLP-1 medications as an effective weight-loss tool have been advocating for ways to make them more affordable for patients. For instance, the average monthly cost of Ozempic is $935.77 without insurance coverage.
Speaking at a conference in Cambridge this summer, Dr. Donna Ryan, former president of The Obesity Society and a leader of initiatives to see weight-loss drugs covered by government and private insurers, claimed that these medications represent the only effective way to treat obesity due to it being a chronic disease, as previously covered by The Dallas Express.
“We are going to have to use these medications for as long as the body wants to have obesity,” said Dr. Lee Kaplan, widely regarded as the leading U.S. authority on obesity, during that same conference, per Reuters.
As extensively covered in The Dallas Express, obesity is a critical public health issue worldwide, with an estimated 1 billion people clinically considered obese and thus at a higher risk for several negative health outcomes ranging from type 2 diabetes to heart disease.