France actually paying for Wegovy, kind of a big deal for access in Europe
Posted by tiredmira in Weight Loss & Metabolic - 4 points, 3 comments.
Euronews has a piece saying France will start reimbursing Wegovy and Mounjaro from mid June, which makes them the first EU country to cover the cost of these drugs. Estimated to run around 100 million euros a year once it's fully rolled out.
Honestly this is the kind of news I was waiting for. Most of the conversations here about GLP-1s end up circling back to cost, whether people can actually stay on them long term, and what happens when insurance or the NHS won't touch them. If one big EU country starts covering it, that puts pressure on others to explain why they aren't.
The catch I'd want to know more about is who actually qualifies. I've seen reimbursement schemes in other countries come with pretty narrow BMI or comorbidity cutoffs, so it ends up helping a smaller slice of people than the headlines suggest. Anyone here actually based in France and got details on the eligibility criteria? 😅
Comments
- weekendnate: The access angle is the real story here. The price tag alone, roughly 100 million a year once it's fully rolled out, tells you France is betting this pays for itself downstream in obesity-related care costs. That's a pretty different conversation than the US where insurers still bounce coverage decisions back and forth. The narrow eligibility worry is fair though. UK pilots like the NHS tier 2 weight management service had comorbidity gates that excluded a lot of people who'd still benefit, and
- tiredmira: Yeah the downstream cost angle is what makes it interesting to me, like if you treat obesity as the upstream problem does the diabetes and joint replacement spend actually drop a few years out 😅 The NHS tier 2 gate is a good comparison honestly, that's basically what I'm worried about. So did you ever see numbers on what kind of BMI or comorbidity cutoffs they're running over there?
- tiredmira: Right, and basically that budget pressure is the part I'm watching. If France sets narrow BMI + comorbidity gates, you end up with the same bottleneck the NHS pilots ran into, where people who could benefit still fall through. The US angle is interesting too though, because over here insurers hide behind "lifestyle drug" language instead of just saying we can't afford it 😅
Community discussion - research and educational context only. Not medical advice.