How A Handful Of Drugs Is Squeezing Medicare

Medicare expects it will spend more $550 million this year for the controversial anti-Alzheimer’s drug Leqembi and predicts the cost will skyrocket to $3.5 billion in 2025, according to Stat News. The program spent $5.7 billion on drugs such as Ozempic and Mounjaro in 2022, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. These GLP-1 medications were designed to treat type 2 diabetes but increasingly have been used by those without the condition to lose weight.

And these costs are likely to skyrocket in coming years. Medicare has agreed to loosen its rules for paying for some GLP-1 drugs if a patient is at risk for heart disease. And while concerns about benefits and risks have slowed take-up of Leqembi, aggressive marketing combined with efforts to vastly expand the number of Americans diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease could substantially boost demand for it and similar monoclonal anti-body drugs.