A reimbursement in France of obesity medications could change the game for thousands of French, while their recipe extended to all doctors, this Friday, June 20.
It remains to be seen if the State and the pharmaceutical laboratories can agree on a price and what will be the invoice for health insurance.
Marketing since 2024 in France, but without being reimbursed, the Danish laboratory tires Novo Nordisk and the Mounjaro of its American competitor Eli Lilly are drugs of the class of the GLP-1 anologists that, by imitating a digestive hormone, promoting weight loss.
These expensive drugs are backed by certain private insurance in the United States, but they are generally not reimbursed in Europe.
Last year, the High Health Authority (HA) opened the door to attention in very strict prescription conditions for people with severe obesity.
Filed requests
Asked by AFP, Novo Nordisk claims to be “mobilized and determined to get Wegovy’s attention as soon as possible for patients”, which emphasized that he did not control “unfortunately” the reimbursement calendar whose “discussions are underway.”
His competitor Eli Lilly, who submitted a new request for reimbursement to HAs in the processing of obesity in April, tells AFP waiting for the file to be evaluated “in the coming months.”
The two pharmaceutical giants are repeated to envy “capable of providing demand” and “to supply the French market and beyond”, even with the expansion of prescribed power to all doctors announced on Friday.
But we should extend access to these treatments at a time when the committee of experts responsible for monitoring health spending warned a “serious risk” of exceeding health insurance spending in 2025 on Wednesday, in particular due to “the savings not achieved in the reimbursement of medicines?
According to October 2024, HA projections, the population eligible for WOGOVY is between “1,050 million and 2.1 million patients.” But “the price is not defined at this stage, it is complex and premature to carry out reliable estimates on the impact in terms of reimbursement of these products,” the CNAM told AFP.
For the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), each euro spent on obesity prevention, the risk factor of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and certain cancers, generates 6 euros of return on investment.
Decision in “Autumn”
Estimate at 12.7 billion euros, the cost of obesity (reimbursed care and absenteeism at work) should potentially exceed 15 billion euros in 2030 in France, according to a study by the firm of Astroès ordered by Novo Nordisk published in January.
Asked by AFP, regardless of a conference on Tuesday, on the horizon of a reimbursement decision, he replied that it was expected in “fall” after a medical-economic evaluation to determine the impact on health insurance expenses.
No one knows even if you can reach an agreement on the price.
“When the negotiator does not happen, it is that the price claimed by the negotiator, in this case the State, is too low, or the price claim by the industrialist is too high, and when there is too much gap, in the end there is no agreement,” explained in March to the general director of Health, Gregory Emery, before the journalists.
Source: BFM TV
