If you’re Christopher Nolan, you spend a quarter of a billion dollars to make The Odyssey. If you’re America’s second-largest bank, you spend that amount on weight loss drugs for your employees, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan told CNBC yesterday.
- BofA spends more than $250 million per year to cover GLP-1s for prescribed members of its 211,000-person workforce.
- That’s 13% of its annual $2+ billion healthcare budget. The bank spent nothing on GLP-1 coverage just four or five years ago (Ozempic was approved by the FDA in 2017).
“It’s been fascinating to watch our teammates’ behavior on these adjustments—the loss of weight. We monitor that, we give them coaches,” Moynihan said. He also noted the drug’s apparent health benefits, such as a lower risk of heart disease.
“We want to be [a] great place to work,” Moynihan said. In recruiting, GLP-1 coverage could be the new unlimited PTO or wellness stipend, especially at a time when other big firms, including PwC, are dropping coverage of expensive weight loss drugs.
Zoom out: Twenty-seven percent of US employers tightened eligibility requirements for GLP-1 coverage this year or plan to do so next year, according to the consulting firm Mercer. But drugmakers see company coverage as a crucial moneymaking pathway to more patients, so Eli Lilly recently discounted its weight loss medication for employers.—ML
