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Medicare premiums may rise as plans move to cover Wegovy
"If costs go up, then the contribution from the federal government goes up, and generally speaking, premiums also go up," Juliette Cubanski, PhD, deputy director of the Medicare policy program at KFF, told NBC.In 2023, more than 50 million Medicare beneficiaries were on Part D plans. This year, the average monthly premium for those plans was $55.50, per CMS. Private insurance companies that administer Part D plans have already started to lock in rates for the 2025 enrollment year, so any price increase likely wouldn't happen within the next year, according to experts.
Many Part D plans already cover glucagon-like peptide-1 agonists such as Ozempic and Mounjaro for Type 2 diabetes. In 2022, gross Medicare spending on GLP-1 drugs hit $5.7 billion. Zooming in on Ozempic, which Medicare began covering in 2018, spending skyrocketed from $2.6 billion in 2021 to $4.6 billion in 2022.
