Semaglutide use could save an estimated $15 billion in cardiovascular healthcare spending, though the projected cost of the drug over the same time period could reach $344 billion, according to a study published Feb. 4 in JAMA Cardiology.
Led by a team at the University of California San Francisco, researchers estimated healthcare savings and pharmaceutical costs associated with the drug semaglutide — the active ingredient in GLP-1 medications such as Ozempic and Wegovy.
Here are five things to know from the study:
- Lifetime semaglutide use among the roughly 4 million U.S. adults without diabetes who have an established cardiovascular disease and are overweight or obese could avert more than 358,000 heart attacks, strokes and cardiovascular deaths.
- Using data from the SELECT trial, researchers estimated these outcomes could be associated with savings of $15 billion in cardiovascular healthcare and $8 billion in other care.
- Using the net price of semaglutide from 2023 — $8,604 per year — the drug would have a lifetime cost of $344 billion for those patients.
- Reducing semaglutide costs from $8,604 to $7,055 annually would bring semaglutide within the cost-effective range, according to a Feb. 4 news release from Boston-based Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
- “Semaglutide and other high-potency GLP-1 agonists are once-in-a-generation breakthroughs that have the potential to transform the cardiometabolic health of the United States population,” Dhruv Kazi, MD, associate director of the Richard A. and Susan F. Smith Center for Outcomes Research and medical director of the Cardiac Critical Care Unit at BIDMC, said in the release. “We must ensure that they are affordable and accessible to all patients who can benefit from them.”
Read the full study here.
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