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34% of employers are offering coverage of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs as demand increases, an 8% increase from last year, according to the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans (IFEBP). How can you check if your job provides coverage for this class of drugs, which experts are finding more and more use cases for than just weight loss?
Ro Co-Founder and CEO Zach Reitano joins Wealth! to discuss the direct-to-patient healthcare company's new tool, the GLP-1 Insurance Coverage Checker, providing patients with extensive and personalized reports on potential GLP-1 coverage.
"And when patients don't know if they're covered, what that ends up doing is it prevents people from seeking care in the first place, which is the number one reason why patients don't start that journey as sort of the unknown cost," Reitano tells Yahoo Finance. "So we built this tool to help patients understand whether or not they're covered. And how much they would have to pay to get access to GLP-1s."
Reitano underlines the significant price differences patients can see when pursuing GLP-1 treatment with and without insurance.
"The only people paying that list price, that $1,000, are patients without coverage or those that are uninsured," Reitano explains, noting an increasing number of patients finding coverage from employers: "You do see Medicare cover it. All federal employees and their families have coverage. So you are seeing coverage rise. You have over 50 million people in the US who are covered for Wegovy. So when people are covered... the average copay we're seeing on our platform is about $50."
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This post was written by Nicholas Jacobino
Editor's note: This headline and post have been updated to more accurately reflect the interview and to correct a misspelling of Mr. Reitano's name.