The negative side of weight loss

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We have a magic aura of weight loss medications like Ozempic and Wegovy in a world that are increasingly suffering from increasingly bad diet and obesity. In many Western countries, obesity rates are related to 40 percent to the United States. Thus, the benefits of societies, as well as the reduction or removal or detection of the spread or detecting: A healthy, happy population is less productive and more productive, less than drainage in public health systems. Financial gains – may be the same for the same drug and health providers.

But where there are the winners, there are losers. And for part of the financial system – life insurance companies and their clients – can prove the magic magic of a fast weight loss loss through the so-called semaglutids.

Everything that is good about obesity – a decrease in cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes and neutralization of death risk of death – life insurance and pensions can make a status quo.

Some actuaries begin to worry about people’s health under the individuals so that the common predictions of confidence will live the general predictions about how much people will live – how much they should distribute their customers before death.

If it is gradually happening, customers can expect future annuity rates and potential to expose the potential of pension containers. If it happens, each obese is far from the forecast of the sixties of the sixties, for example, the burden can be taken to the insurers themselves and equity buffers.

So far, any effect on the insurance industry is mainly theoretical. But the fast growing numbers of people who take such drugs – 6 percent of Americans The six obese in the country means that the topic equal to about one of the people – the topic that the subject is to compare to the company’s results.

The legal and common of the UK insurer recently asked Assumptions of life expectation should be changed as a result of weight loss. The financial director Jeff Davies said the issue “constantly followed,” he said, although the issue of obesity is taking advantage of the drug. “It is done,” he said.

So what happens to this review? For some time, the actuars are a life expectancy of up to 1.5 percent to improve the routine in health and lifestyle. However, it is impossible to imagine a new scenario of sharper development.

The last research by Lane Clark and Peacock, measuring the risk of death with a placebo, which measures the risk of death for any reason, offered to grow 15 percent for people with an obesity with a placebo. Apart three-year In previous patients, the probability of death with cardiovascular conditions, a heart attack or hitting was 20 percent.

For decades for the last important conversion of this long-lasting conversion of longevity – a sharp decline in cigarette rates – in many Western society (if the long-term trend of the cavid pandeme is violated). Lifetime length has increased since the 1960s 10-15 percent for about 80 years For example, in most Western Europe. My colleague like John Burn-Murdoch pointedA drug renewal promises to deliver a similar dramatic development, but for a period of more than half a century and over a period of years, 42 percent of the age of 42 percent of the year to fall from 42 percent to 42 percent less than 12 per cent.

Of course, uncertainty remains. The long-term effects of semaglutides are not completely known. Some side effects can be turned off. And the results of research can’t scale up to all populations. Nevertheless, some experts are confident that the innovation can be compared to a treatment for a large cancer in terms of potential impact on the longevity of the population. “Insurers are exactly the type of game that is required for planning,” said Stuart McDonald, specialist consultant LCP.

For health insurers (and indeed social health systems), long-term reduction in the treatment of chronic diseases can be more instead of a large jump in the expenses of treatment. However, on the contrary, life and pension companies are likely to apply. For their boards and regulators – as reinsurance companies that may take a risk of longevity – Sanguine may not be a longer option.

patrick.jenkins@ft.com