When she recommends the popular weight-loss drug Wegovy, Dr. Angela Fitch sendsout clients on a mission she compares to “The Hunger Games.”
They will have to call pharmacies over anumberof days to discover one with the appropriately sized veryfirst dosage. Then they’ll do that onceagain for their 2nd dosage, and mostlikely the 3rd. And that’s just if the client has insurancecoverage or the indicates to payfor a drug that can expense more than $1,300 a month.
“This is not for the weak-willed,” stated Fitch, who is president of the Obesity Medicine Association and likewise seeksadvicefrom for drugmakers.
Supply issues and insurancecoverage issues haveactually made it challenging for individuals to start — and stay on — Wegovy and comparable medications that are changing weightproblems treatment, according to medicalprofessionals and clients around the nation. They state getting the high-demand, injectable drugs needs determination and a reasonable quantity of luck.
People beginning on Wegovy have to take injections of slowly increasing strength priorto they reach the so-called upkeep dosage that they stay on.
The drug’s maker, Novo Nordisk, states that need hasactually required it to limit the supply of those smallersized, preliminary dosages in the U.S. The business likewise is caution those taking another weight-loss drug, Saxenda, to anticipate trouble filling prescriptions “for the rest of 2023 and beyond.”
Another drugmaker, Eli Lilly, has stated it anticipates tight materials upuntil year’s end for its diabetes treatment Mounjaro, which likewise is recommended for weight loss.
Finding Wegovy can endupbeing a part-time task for clients, stated Dr. Diana Thiara, medical director of the weight management center at the University of California, San Francisco.
Thiara stated some wind up driving 45 minutes or more to get prescriptions filled, a barrier for perhour employees who can’t leave their task and for individuals without carsandtrucks.
“It’s typically clients who are a little bit more fortunate, able to take off from work to go make those drives,” Thiara stated.
One of Fitch’s clients, Mike Bouboulis, hasactually taken Saxenda, Mounjaro or Ozempic, a Novo diabetes drug with the verysame active component as Wegovy, because around2019 It endedupbeing much harder for him to discover the drugs in the past year, after their appeal tookoff.
Refilling a prescription included calling 5 to 7 drugstores.
“They all understand what you’re calling for, and they all have the verysame response: ‘I puton’