CVS Caremark to cover Foundayo, Zepbound obesity drugs
· UPIMay 28 (UPI) -- CVS Caremark will start covering Eli Lilly's Foundayo and resume covering its Zepbound obesity drugs in the next several months.
Lilly announced the deal with CVS on Thursday about a year after its insurance plans picked up coverage of Novo Nordisk's Wegovy weight loss drug and dropped coverage of Zepbound.
CVS is expected to start covering Foundayo, which is Lilly's most recently approved weight loss drug, on June 1, while it will resume coverage of Zepbound across its plans by October 1, Lilly said in a press release.
The deal means that CVS Caremark's list of covered drugs that insurers and employers can choose to cover will include more weight loss options from Lilly and Novo Nordisk, offering greater choice to an estimated 25 million to 30 million people in the United States, CNBC reported.
"Not all medicines work the same for all patients," Ilya Yuffa, executive vice president and president of Lilly USA and global customer capabilities, said in the release.
"Broader coverage puts real choice in the hands of millions of Americans and their doctors," Yuffa said.
Foundayo, Lilly's weekly weight loss pill, was approved by the Food and Drug Administration and made available in April, and is one of two oral GLP-1 medications approved by the agency -- Wegovy is the other one.
Lilly's other two weight loss medications, Zepbound and Mounjaro, are taken as weekly injections, like Novo Nordisk's Ozempic.
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