By al Lewis
Last month, Aon, the main consultancy firm, published a “study” saying:
An important opportunity to reduce the costs of health care for employers and improve the overall health of workforce thanks to a complete obesity management program that includes GLP-1 medicines.
Of course, this is the opposite of what most researchers have shown. And in the immortal words of the great terrible philosophers: “Two men say that they are Jesus, one of them must be wrong.” We will soon see who is wrong (uh, a sense of weight loss drugs) when we dive into the study in one minute. But first, let’s review the previous analyzes of Aon.
A brief story of Aon
Aon said that Accolade had saved 8%, but it seems that they had by chance the absent of the day when the biostatistic teacher explained how the control groups work, as well as the day when the fifth year mathematics teacher explained how the averages worked.
Then they said that Lyra – who is a mental Health company – did the following non -mental Improvements in all patients who had at least one mental health meeting with one of their “220,000 high quality suppliers”:
§ A 30% reduction in No– Mental health emergency visits
§ A 30% reduction in generic medication expenses
§ A 20% reduction in specialized drug spending
Thank you in part at the start of the Y axis at $ 4,000 to improve the optics, Aon also revealed that Lyra had reached a very high “efficiency ratio”:
I cannot oppose this conclusion because – despite three decades in this area, around 100 articles / interviews / quotes / quotes, including the Wall Street JournalTwo commercial sales books and a case study by the Harvard Business School – I still don’t know what an “efficiency ratio” is, except that has nothing to do with the comparison of participants in non -participants in a mental health study. Apparently, a “efficiency report” in health care measures the speed with which a hospital returns its inventory. The use by Aon of the term therefore recalls the immortal words of the great philosopher Bob Uecker: “JUULUST a little outside.”
When he asked for publicly and deprived of explaining one of these things, Aon came up against. It was probably wise from them.
They will not answer here either because they understand the Streisand effect. (Barbara continued a photographer for having photographed her Malibu manor in the air as the California erosion reduction at the state’s request. Six people had downloaded this image before continuing. million People have downloaded the image. In addition, she lost and also had to pay lawyer fees.)
More recently, it seems that they may also have had a hand in the pot of PBM cookies.
Aon weight loss drug study
While admitting that the costs jumped the first year, Aon found a 7% “turn” in the cost curve the second year, by participants compared to a “control group with precision”. Appariated controls, so “precise”, are invalid, end. This is why the FDA does not let the pharmaceutical companies use them. More famous, some very stable geniuses of the well-being industry have inadvertently proven it when they published this graph. They thought they showed that the participants in well-being programs saved money from the non-party paids. Unfortunately for them, a superficial look at the X axis reveals the “total economies” of “treatment” well named Two years before the start of treatmentSimply because the voluntary participants are motivated.
The related problem is that over a period of two years – the same duration that we have studied – most consumers of weight loss drugs have abandoned. However, there is no accounting – or to mention abandonment in this study.
Only people still on drugs are counted. The others would be “lost follow -up”. The counting only of those still in the program at the end is called “Bias Survivor” or the error “Last Man Standing”. This is why a weight loss program shows great results – most people leave most of the programs because they do not succeed. Ironically, the higher the abandonment rate, the more the results are generally high among the few survivors.
It is also literally impossible for the costs of “folding” 7% overall By reducing the rate of heart attacks and cerebral vascular accidents by 44%. This is because there are simply not enough of these events to do so. The rate of the two is around 1 per 1000 in the insured population <65. And Aon did not even claim a reduction of 44% of these events. They claimed to reduce the "risk" of these events by 44%. A cynic could observe that, of course, if they have reduced real events By this amount, they would have said it.
No need to believe us for this conclusion. We have made our savingoculator from weight loss drugs for free. Enter your own hypotheses and decide for yourself.
The way they can determine someone’s risk of their claims is someone’s assumption. Suppose that twins have parents who died early heart disease. The first is very concerned about this. He takes statins, metformin, perhaps sees a cardiologist, gets a stent, etc. The second does nothing to alleviate its genetic risk. The second is at a much higher risk than the first, but the “risk score” will say the opposite. Many people do not even know that they are at risk of coronary disease before having an event. So how can Aon know?
What is Aon doing?
Admittedly, an actuarial consulting company whose reputation is based on being an actuarial consulting company would not risk this reputation by writing articles like these, right?
Well, certainly not for free.
They were paid by Lyra, were paid by hug and (allegedly) were paid by express scripts. In this case-for anyone who does not want to open the calculator for free weight loss drugs above to understand themselves-Aon “will work with employers in the modeling of the long-term commercial impact of the adoption of GLP-1”.
And since their model is false, “working with” Aon is – again in the immortal words of unpleasant strait – “money for nothing”.
Al Lewis is CEO of QuizPresident of Validation Institute and black beast of the well-being industry. He blog occasionally at What did they say?
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