The government will cover obesity drugs for Medicare patients starting July 1. Except they forgot to mention it to anyone. No ads. No mailers. No press tour. Just a quiet policy shift affecting millions of seniors who still think the internet is a fad.
Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk make these drugs. Two pharmaceutical giants sitting on the biggest Medicare expansion in years. Their marketing strategy appears to be silence. Maybe they figure word of mouth will do the trick. Nothing spreads faster than news about weight loss medication except maybe a rumor about free dinner at Golden Corral.
This creates a perfect storm. Seniors qualify for landmark drug coverage they don't know exists. The companies selling the drugs aren't advertising. The government rolled out the policy with all the fanfare of a Wednesday staff meeting. Somewhere a consultant got paid six figures to devise this communication plan.
Retail traders will read this headline and immediately start looking for the angle. They'll pull up charts on LLY and NVO. Draw some lines. Convince themselves they spotted the pattern before everyone else. Then they'll buy calls and wonder why the stock didn't move when literally nobody knows about the coverage change.
The drugs cost thousands per month. Medicare will now pay for them. But only if seniors know to ask their doctors. And their doctors know the policy changed. And the pharmacy systems get updated. And prior authorizations go through. What could possibly go wrong with that chain of dependencies.
July 1 arrives in three days. The landmark coverage begins. Millions of eligible seniors will keep not knowing about it. Eli Lilly and Novo will keep not advertising it. The government will keep not publicizing it. And six months from now someone will write a think piece asking why adoption rates are so low. The answer will be in this article that nobody read because they didn't know it existed either.
Leave a Comment