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As pharma companies and President Trump tout initiatives to sell branded medications directly to cash-paying consumers, some entrepreneurs have seized on a potential business opportunity — pitching a new model for employers to help their workers pay for medications without using insurance. Take the blockbuster obesity treatments Wegovy and Zepbound, for example. Many employers don’t cover them, since they find them too expensive to add to their health plans. But now that the drug manufacturers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk have started selling the products directly to patients at about $500 a month, employers are being incentivized by startups to subsidize part of the cash price for their workers. Their pitch is this: Employers can pay less than they would if they covered the drugs through insurance and, with a subsidy, employees can get the treatments at a lower cost than if they paid the full cash price on their own.
