That's kinda wild, because it seems like holy shit if you're taking a drug that lets you drop 10-20% of your body weight from obese down to normal why would you stop taking it, but people do.
Gating it behind mandatory expensive, difficult-to-schedule appointments with a specialist who is in abruptly short supply where the insurance company is doing their damndest to kick as many of them off their network as they can without getting caught to keep the shortage going is certainly part of that strategy. And the result is “people do not stay on the drug”, which is their goal, and if they don’t meet that goal they have an even bigger problem and can’t continue to exist as a functioning company.
The simple fact is, when it comes to drugs, the development is basically paid for by Americans.
Source: UK based friend who says the pharmacy will refuse to sell them once they fall under BMI 25 (still overweight). They'd prefer to be on the tiny maintenance dose but it seems to be very hard to achieve (unless you're going off the market completely).
We'll also keep you on a small maintenance dose if you want, that's a conversation you'll have with your clinician and they'll judge whether it's medically appropriate. As far as I know, there's usually no reason to prevent you, though.
I don't think it's possible to send dms here....
As far as I know, though, you can move to us from another pharmacy even with a BMI of < 25, as maintenance has different criteria than new prescription.
I'm not a clinician, though, so I may be wrong. If you want to email me, I can ask the clinicians and tell you for sure.
I understand that's not really how it works, but people often go very much by feel more than anything else.
In this sense it's like any diet: they "work", but if you don't permanently modify your food intake, the weight comes back as soon as you go off the diet.
I think that in a few more years the number may stay at 25% (or whatever) but that the makeup of the 25% may be different. That is, people will go off it and back on it if they see their progress reverse but that will happen to different people at different times.
