• Posted April 1, 2025

GLP-1 Drug Use For Weight Loss Has Soared, Costing Billions

The number of Americans taking cutting-edge weight-loss drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy and Zepbound has skyrocketed in recent years, a new study says.

The number of people without diabetes taking a GLP-1 drug more than tripled between 2018 and 2022 in the U.S., researchers reported March 31 in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Spending on these drugs reached $5.8 billion in 2022, with average prices consistently exceeding $1,500 per prescription, results show.

“Despite this, adoption remained limited, as only 1 in 250 U.S. adults without diabetes used a GLP-1 (drug) in 2022,” wrote the research team led by Michelle Dowsey, an epidemiologist with the University of Melbourne in Australia.

GLP-1 drugs mimic the GLP-1 hormone, which helps control insulin and blood sugar levels, decreases appetite and slows digestion of food.

Initially approved to control diabetes, the drugs’ effectiveness at helping people lose weight led to their later approval for that purpose as well.

For this study, researchers analyzed U.S. federal research data in which people were asked about their GLP-1 prescriptions.

Results showed that among people without diabetes, GLP-1 drug use rose from 0.1% of the population in 2018 to 0.4% in 2022.

That doesn’t seem like a lot, amounting to an estimated 854,000 Americans without diabetes using GLP-1 drugs to lose weight in 2022, but the drugs are costly, and can run close to $1,000 or more a month, researchers found.

As a result, estimated annual spending on GLP-1 drugs among non-diabetics rose from $1.6 billion between 2018 and 2021 to $5.8 billion in 2022, the study showed.

On average, the drugs cost $1,540 per prescription, but patients paid an average of just under $35 out-of-pocket for each prescription.

The study provides the first characterization of nationwide GLP-1 use and spending among individuals without diabetes “to guide ongoing debates about balancing the sustainability of health care spending against improving accessibility and affordability of GLP-1 medications going forward,” researchers concluded.

More information

Harvard Medical School has more on insurance coverage for GLP-1 drugs.

SOURCE: Annals of Internal Medicine, March 31, 2025