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In part 4 of this Exclusive Interview, John Buse talks with Diabetes in Control Publisher Steve Freed about insurance coverage of SGLT-2 drugs and the challenges for patients with heart and kidney issues.
John Buse, PhD, MD, is professor, chief of the Division of Endocrinology, and director of the Diabetes Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine.
Transcript of this video segment:
Freed: That’s interesting. So, because there’s this benefit of reduction of hospitalization which is very expensive, do you find more insurance companies are opting to pay for these type of drugs to save money even though the drugs are kind of expensive?
Buse: It’s hard to generalize about insurance companies. There’s nothing you can generalize about insurance companies. And then within an insurance company they’ll have different plans. But I’d say in general these SGLT-2 Inhibitors are covered by most insurance plans. It may be at a higher co-pay than a generic drug, but the coverage is pretty good. And the results from the clinical trials, as I said when we first started talking for these SGLT-2 Inhibitors were absolutely stunning, reductions in heart attack, stroke, cardiovascular death. Things that people think are really important. And this additional benefit on hospitalization for heart failure and that’s clinical condition where there is no other drug that has shown this kind of benefit in a population of patients with diabetes and benefits on kidney outcomes. Again, of the complications that patients with diabetes face, it’s really cardiovascular disease and kidney outcomes that we don’t have a good handle on otherwise. The eye disease, we have laser therapy and all the miracles the ophthalmologist can do. For neuropathy, we have great efforts of podiatrists, and the foot care specialists to provide appropriate footwear. The heart failure, cardiovascular disease, kidney diseases, are really where the problems are for patients with diabetes.