Radar on Medicare Advantage

Medicare is spending billions on GLP-1s, the groundbreaking diabetes drugs that are now seeing skyrocketing demand for their ability to help patients lose weight. While Medicare Part D plans are prohibited from covering weight loss therapies, a new FDA decision for Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy (semaglutide) could reshape the coverage landscape for some GLP-1s — and drive Part D spending even higher. 

A March 22 analysis from KFF found that Part D spending on Novo’s Ozempic (semaglutide) alone reached $4.6 billion in 2022, a 77% increase from the prior year and a 207% increase from 2020. (Novo brands its injectable semaglutide as Ozempic for the treatment of type 2 diabetes and as Wegovy for weight loss.) KFF found that Part D spending on GLP-1s has grown exponentially every year since 2018. Eli Lilly’s Trulicity (dulaglutide), an older GLP-1 that hit the market in 2014, saw the second-highest gross Part D spending among all therapies in 2022 at $6.2 billion. Ozempic, meanwhile, sat at No. 6. KFF speculated that both Ozempic and Novo’s oral semaglutide Rybelsus could be selected for Medicare drug price negotiation as early as 2025. 

In newly released guidance, CMS told Medicare Part D plans that they’re allowed to cover weight-loss drugs if they’ve been approved for another medical use — a description fitting Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy (semaglutide) after it recently received an FDA nod for preventing major heart problems.

So far, CVS Health Corp., Elevance Health, Inc. and Kaiser Permanente have said their Part D plans will cover Wegovy for its newest approved use: reducing the risk of heart attacks and strokes in people who have cardiovascular disease and who meet body-weight criteria, the Wall Street Journal reported on March 28.

For other insurers that sell Part D plans, the decision about whether to cover Wegovy represents an additional challenge to grapple with, as they’re also facing significant regulatory changes.

When it comes to aging in place, seniors in the U.S. have a hodgepodge of programs and services available to them, and health plans can be a connector to and integrator of those services in their respective markets. Speakers at AHIP’s 2024 Medicare, Medicaid, Duals & Commercial Markets Forum, held March 12 to 14 in Baltimore, agreed that health plans can also play a valuable role in driving innovations across the Medicare and Medicaid programs, such as providing emergency and acute care in the home, supporting family caregivers, and advocating for policy solutions.

Before CMS in 2020 introduced the Hospital Without Walls program enabling health systems to provide acute hospital care in the home, integrated insurer-provider Kaiser Permanente (KP) launched the Advanced Care at Home (ACAH) model. One of several KP initiatives that support aging in place, ACAH leverages expert care teams and technology to provide 24/7 physician-led acute care and coordinate patients’ recovery in the familiar setting of the home. Eligible patients are identified in urgent care, emergency and/or inpatient settings but must also meet certain social and clinical criteria, explained Rachna Pandya, regional strategic implementation leader of Medicare operations and strategy, during the session, “Best Practices to Support Aging in Place.”

Nearly a year into the massive nationwide effort to reverify Medicaid eligibility after a pause in redeterminations during the COVID-19 pandemic, about 40% of renewals have yet to occur. With millions of people estimated to have lost coverage because of administrative or procedural reasons, states have an opportunity to work with managed care organizations and other health care providers to innovate and improve existing processes that aren’t working, according to panelists at a recent session of AHIP’s 2024 Medicare, Medicaid, Duals & Commercial Markets Forum, held March 12 to 14 in Baltimore.

“This is still very much in progress,” and “these next few months are going to be very important,” declared panelist Kate Honsberger, a director with NORC at the University of Chicago. States as of April 1, 2023, were allowed to begin disenrolling people from Medicaid who no longer qualify, but they have 12 months to complete eligibility redeterminations, which may have kicked off at different times depending on the state.