GLP-1s Are Breaking Life Insurance

So... There's a miracle drug powerful enough to robustly lower people's all cause mortality enough to throw off the life insurance underwriters, but since health insurance and life insurance are industries with vastly different time preferences, this is not a good thing for the life insurers because people just keep getting off the magic longevity drug. Because, admittedly, it kind of sucks in the moment to be on.

And I'm guessing just based on my own experience paying for term life that the actual premia differences aren't actually enough in most cases for the life insurer to simply pay out of pocket themselves; the differences probably add up to a few hundred per year per customer, whereas a year's worth of a GLP-1 agonist probably costs a couple thousand (for now, in 2025, and probably dropping rapidly).

Huh. Second order implementation details aside, this is an extremely fortunate turn of events for us.

I was on Mounjaro for two months. I was also dieting and walking 10k steps a day. I lost 25 lb and my A1C went down to 5.0 from 5.7. All my cholesterol numbers were in range. I stopped taking it and lost 25 more. I haven’t regained the weight. People who gain it back did not learn the lesson and did not effectively change their habits. You need the discipline

Obesity is highly correlated with other medical conditions, from cancer to diabetes to heart disease. I wonder if there is a point at which it is cheaper for health insurance companies to offer subsidized or even free GLP-1s to patients than pay out for other specialized medications. For example, my insurance covers flu shots in my community every year because it's presumably less expensive to pay for the shots compared to the increased rate of hospitalization that the flu causes.

The problem (not new with GLP-1s) is that people lose weight, get life insurance, and then regain.

The biggest part of that equation is regain part. Most people quit GLP-1s because of costs. Let's fix that.

I've always felt that there's some trade to be done here, with life and health insurers basically giving glp-1 et all for free bc they lower the cost of everything else

edit: and then Big Annuity lobbying to oppose this

Well I guess a GLP-1 pacemaker would address this. A lifetime of doses weighs at much as a nickel?

It sounds like aligning incentives here is requiring the weight stay off for the policy to remain in effect with an annual physical for monitoring, similar to what employers require for health insurance premium reductions. Point in time underwriting is suboptimal considering current state of the art of GLP-1s (unless newer protocols that can update metabolic profiles are delivered soon).

so surreal reading comments... a month after non-stop threads about glp causing a billion issues, everyone is talking about how wonderful they are again.

humanity

This is a fun read, however-

"Life insurers can predict when you'll die with about 98% accuracy."

This conclusion isn't supported by the linked document. The document instead is talking about expected vs actual deaths among demographic groups as a whole, not individual people. And that expected vs actual is just history + trends. This doesn't mean that insurance can say that Joe Blow is going to die in June of 2027 with "98% accuracy", obviously.

I guess, but this is sort of the same as going on a statin to get your cholesterol down for a better insurance rate. Then going off because of reasons...

I believe AI along with smart glasses that shows and calculates your daily caloric intake will be a substitute to the Ozempics.

With AI glasses doing this automatically for you upon seeing what your eating without u having to do anything some people may be shocked to learn how many calories they consume daily.

Currently, it's too time consuming now for the majority to do (i use GPT via texting it or talking to it to keep track as I eat out daily at healthy chains) but if it was done automagically I believe it definitely would be a substitute to Ozempic. I bet some or more would use that easily captured data that's shown to them (in the glasses or on their mobile device) to strive, make and possibly compete with their friends/family to eat less calories and carry less weight on them (be healthier). You can train your body to eat less to a lot less and for some that would definitely help them shed weight. The glasses could as well deduct calories burned from your daily walk, jog, etc.

*Being downvoted hmmm do you think AI by seeing it can't via an image calculate the calories of a burrito bought from Chipolte and other chains? All chains have nutrition information on their websites now that GPT goes and fetches. As for home cooked prepared meals I have taken pics of my food via GPT and it seemed to come close.

I still can’t believe millions of people are choosing to eat unhealthy food and medicate themselves out of obesity instead of just changing their diet.

I realize this is a fraught question, because not everyone is overweight by choice (whether due to a subsisting on whatever they can afford, time, genetics, injury, etc,.) but I believe that insurers are able to consider whether someone smokes cigarettes when setting premiums for ACA based healthcare. With the above caveats that would make this difficult, it would be nice if we could treat "voluntary" obesity similarly.