Towns going broke because more public employees signed up for weight loss drugs than expected

[BlueWaveNeverEnd]

Officials in Belchertown, Mass., were saving up to fix their broken roads and aging buildings last year when they were hit with a surprise $911,000 invoice.

The bill came from the Hampshire County Group Insurance Trust, which manages healthcare for dozens of New England towns, school districts and other public entities. The trust was struggling to control rising costs that had sucked up its reserves, including a new, surprising culprit: the snowballing cost of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs.

The trust was nearing insolvency, and towns would need to pay up to keep it afloat.
“The universal reaction was shock,” said Lesa Lessard Pearson, chair of the Select Board in Belchertown, a town of 15,000 in western Massachusetts. Officials had to draw from the town’s long-term savings and make departmental cuts, including school-budget reductions, to pay off the bill. “It felt like a betrayal,” she said.

___

Cities and towns are now racing to control surging healthcare costs, and many blame the increasingly ubiquitous drugs for contributing to a budget squeeze.

Some towns are gearing up to strip coverage of GLP-1s for weight loss when their fiscal years end next month. Other localities have decided that the costs of the drugs are worth their potential health benefits. And some are stuck paying for the drugs until they can renegotiate contracts with employees.



https://www.wsj.com/us-news/u-s-towns-paid-for-teachers-and-cops-to-use-weight-loss-drugs-it-broke-the-bank-3c46ec87