Patients struggle to pay for obesity drugs as insurance coverage slips : NPR
Meghan Lena was devastated when she lost coverage for her obesity medication. Jodi Hilton for NPR hide caption toggle caption Jodi Hilton for NPR Get the latest on the science of healthy living in the NPR Health newsletter, sent weekly. For Meghan Lena, a special ed teacher in Massachusetts, the letter she got last spring from the company that manages her drug benefits really hurt. CVS Caremark said it was dropping Eli Lilly’s blockbuster obesity drug Zepbound from its coverage in July. “I was devastated,” she says. She’d been able to get Zepbound for a $30 monthly copay and had lost 50 pounds in a year. The drug helped her focus on being a new mom and gaining strength at the gym, she says, not just counting calories burned. She feared that if she stopped taking it, all her progress would vanish. Lena wound up switching to Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy, CVS Caremark’s preferred obesity drug, and was relieved that it worked for her. But just a few months later, in October, her employer’s health plan …





