Do GLP-1 Medications Pay for Themselves?

Coady Wing, Sih-Ting Cai, Daniel W. Sacks and Kosali Simon

No 34678, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: GLP-1 receptor agonists improve treatment for diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease, but their high prices create fiscal pressure for insurers. GLP-1 spending may overstate net costs because health improvements reduce downstream health spending. We use insurance claims to estimate cost offsets for GLP-1s and find no reduction in downstream medical spending through 60 months. Rather, each dollar of GLP-1 spending generates $0.22 (SE 0.066) in additional non-GLP-1 medical spending, largely outpatient care. Offsets are similar across baseline health sub-populations. However, cost offsets for semaglutide—a more effective later generation GLP-1—are smaller and statistically indistinguishable from zero.

JEL-codes: I11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea
Note: AG EH
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w34678.pdf (application/pdf)
Access to the full text is generally limited to series subscribers, however if the top level domain of the client browser is in a developing country or transition economy free access is provided. More information about subscriptions and free access is available at http://www.nber.org/wwphelp.html. Free access is also available to older working papers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Do GLP-1 medications pay for themselves? (2025)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:34678

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w34678
The price is Paper copy available by mail.

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().