Could Ozempic bankrupt the NHS?

The NHS spends around £6.5 billion every year treating obesity. People who are overweight cost the health service twice as much as those who maintain a healthy weight. Half of all cancer cases are linked to obesity and being severely overweight significantly increases the risk of other conditions, such as diabetes, strokes and heart attacks. No public health campaign or intervention has ever worked. Obesity rates have nearly doubled in the UK since the 1990s. More than 60 per cent of adults are overweight.

It’s hoped that weight-loss injections, known as GLP-1 agonists – semaglutide (also known as Wegovy or Ozempic) and the more recent market entry tirzepatide (Mounjaro) – could reverse this trend. Rishi Sunak announced last month that he’s committed to rolling out these drugs – which were originally developed to treat type 2 diabetes – on the NHS to tackle the nation’s ill health. Until now, weight-loss injections have been restricted to pilot programmes on the health service; most patients taking these drugs get them privately. The Treasury is said to be supportive of the roll-out, but can the nation really afford them?

Other countries provide a warning. Wegovy is only available in a handful of European nations, such as Germany, Denmark, the UK and Switzerland. Everywhere demand outstrips supply. Last month, the Danish government, where the manufacturer of Wegovy and Ozempic is based, announced that it would restrict prescriptions for Ozempic and will start putting patients with type 2 diabetes on cheaper drugs first. This came after the bill for the GLP-1 agonists topped $200 million last year, double 2022’s expenditure. In total, it accounted for a staggering 8 per cent of all Denmark’s medicine costs.

In the US, a report published last month by the Senate’s Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee claimed high GLP-1 drug prices, coupled with high uptake, could ‘bankrupt our entire health-care system’.