Comptroller extends state employee weight loss program for high priced drugs

Connecticut Comptroller Sean Scanlon announced that his office intends to “permanently contract” with Intellihealth to continue using the company’s Flyte program for state employee health plan members to manage their weight with high-priced GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic, Wegovy, and other anti-obesity medications (AOMs).

The contract comes after Scanlon says the state’s pilot program utilizing Flyte for weight loss, which currently services over 4,200 state health plan members, has shown success lowering weight, body mass index, and blood pressure through utilizing the expensive and popular GLP-1 drugs, which are on track to cost the state between $35 and $40 million this year.

The contract will also expand the state’s weight-loss monitoring program by including “brick and mortar” doctors practices in Connecticut and expanding eligibility to Connecticut retirees through the state’s Medicare Advantage plan.

“When I took office, the state employee health plan was seeing an unsustainable 50-percent year-over-year increase in spending on GLP-1 weight loss drugs,” Scanlon said in a press release . “Rather than simply accept those rising costs or cutting off our members’ access to these drugs like other states have done, we embarked on a third path with Intellihealth, and it has worked.”

Flyte is a telehealth program that connects patients to doctors, dieticians, and weight-loss experts online. To be prescribed GLP-1 drugs, state health plan members must enroll in Flyte and can only obtain their prescriptions through the program, which has led at least one Connecticut doctor to criticize the program for taking away a significant portion of his patients.

Flyte was created by Intellihealth, a medical technology company that Connecticut’s quasi-public venture capital agency invested into in 2022, a year before the state began to require state employees and their families to use the program to receive weight-loss drugs.

“We’ve seen time and time again that just giving someone an AOM prescription and sending them home is not a recipe for success,” said Intellihealth CEO Sloan Saunders. “The best outcomes are achieved when clinicians take the time to create a personalized treatment plan, ensure appropriate dose titration, monitor and address any side effects, and ensure that participants receive the necessary education and support to maintain healthy lifestyle changes over the long term.”

Scanlon sees the move as a cost-containing measure. The press release notes that “Flyte clinicians optimize the use of low-cost generics and other anti-obesity medications to contain costs,” but also that weight loss and lowered blood pressure will reduce potentially more costly long-term health problems.

“We recognize the potential of these medications to save the plan money in the long term, by decreasing the incidence of costly weight-related conditions such as type 2 diabetes and heart disease, but we needed to ensure the medications were being prescribed in a way that would produce the best outcomes for our members,” Scanlon said in a press release.

Waterbury-based naturopathic doctor Marcos De Escobar said recently that Connecticut’s switch to Flyte and Intellihealth for state employee weight loss treatment has cost him numerous patients, sending them to out-of-state doctors. Intellihealth is a Connecticut-based company with offices in New Canaan, according to the comptroller’s office, but lists all relevant addresses as San Francisco. De Escobar also criticized the state for consistently supporting large healthcare groups to the detriment of smaller private practices and limiting who patients can choose as their physician through Flyte.

According to the Comptroller’s press release and previous reports, state health plan members using GLP-1 drugs for weight loss showed a significant decrease in weight, BMI, and blood pressure, but some states have moved to ban the drugs from their state health plans because of the cost.

North Carolina recently decided to end coverage of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy due to the escalating costs, which were estimated to be over $168 million per year, with warnings the cost could rise to $300 million per year, according to a report by Segal to the North Carolina State Health Plan .

“As we have mentioned throughout this memo, the costs of AOMs is going to continue to escalate, with the trend not being sustainable,” Segal wrote in their report. “If there were significant savings in medical claims to offset the high pharmacy cost, most plans would cover these drugs, but that has yet to be proven.”

“Flyte has delivered compelling results, and we’re excited to be able to continue to provide cost-effective and clinically appropriate access to these life-changing medications,” Scanlon said.

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