Late last year, South Carolina Medicaid approved a class of medications known as GLP-1s to treat obesity, placing it among the few state programs covering these effective but expensive drugs. But access remains limited, even for patients covered by Medicaid, because of stringent prerequisites that must be satisfied before starting the drug.
For years, weight loss has been sold as a simple math problem: eat less, move more, and the pounds will melt away. But if that were true, we wouldn’t have an obesity epidemic affecting over 40 percent of adults in the U.S. Now, a new class of med…
Chronic, non-communicable diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide and make up 8 of the 10 top causes of death in the U.S. Across several chronic diseases, the U.S. has a higher burden of illness than peer nations. The reasons why are complex …
Some Trump insiders are ready to take on the food industry. It remains to be seen whether their entrée will result in any meaningful change in government oversight of “Big Food” — or in American health.
KFF Health News staff made the rounds on national and local media in recent weeks to discuss topical stories. Here’s a collection of their appearances.
This policy watch examines the implications of new proposed regulations that would allow Medicare and require Medicaid to cover drugs used to treat obesity, including a relatively new class of highly effective but costly drugs known as GLP-1s.
More than two in five (42%) or 57.4 million adults under 65 with private insurance could be eligible under clinical criteria for GLP-1 drugs used to treat people with type 2 diabetes, obesity, or excess weight and weight-related health issues, accordin…
Subscribe to The Podcast by KevinMD. Watch on YouTube. Catch up on old episodes! In this episode, we dive into the complexities of obesity with gastroenterologist Pooja Singhal. Together, we explore the media’s portrayal of new obesity medication…
At the November 2022 Obesity Week in San Diego, it was clear something big was happening. A late-breaking session released results of the STEP TEENS phase IIIa trial, showing 16 percent weight loss in adolescents with obesity treated with once-weekly s…
According to some academics, in 2019, a ban on junk food advertising across London’s entire public transport network—foods and drinks high in fat and salt and ads for foods–resulted in the prevention of 100,000 obesity cases. Yet the U.S. love af…
