Digest opened free editor

Rola Khaleda, FT editor, chooses her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.

In a world that is increasingly suffering from a bad diet and obesity, medications that lose weight such as OzemPIC and Wegovy have a magic aura. In many western countries, obesity rates towards the US balance are 40 percent. Therefore, the benefits belonging to societies and individuals to reduce or even eliminate this proliferation are clear: the most healthy and happier population who are more productive and less than the discharge of public health systems. Financial gains – for drug makers and health service providers can be vast.

But wherever there are winners, there are losers. For one part of the financial system-life insurance companies and their customers-the magic talisman for rapid weight loss through the so-called almondotide can prove a hexagonal hexagon.

All that is good in decreased obesity – low cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes, and neutralizing more than 40 percent of deaths – can penetrate the status quo of life insurance and pensions.

Some actuarians began to worry that the health difficulty of individuals may be so extreme that they raise the predictions of the total insurance companies about the period in which people will live – and thus the amount of money they will need to distribute to their customers before their death.

If this happens gradually, customers can expect insurance companies to reduce future installments rates, and perhaps a deficiency in the value of retirement utensils for individuals. If this happens quickly, the average life expectancy will be increased for each agent who suffers from sixty -sixty after they buy the annual installments, for example, the burden on the insurance companies themselves can fall and eat in capitalist temporary warehouses.

To date, any effect on the insurance industry is largely theoretical. But rapidly growing numbers from people who take this type of medicine- 6 percent of Americans In the last census, the equivalent of nearly one of every six people suffering from obesity in the country – means that the issue began to appear in the company’s results with analysts.

UK insurance company is legal and public He was asked recently Whether her assumptions about the average life expectancy will need to change as a result of drug loss drugs. Finance director Jeff Davies said that the group “is constantly monitoring” this issue, although he reduced the possibility that current elderly agents will benefit from obesity from taking the drug. “The damage happened,” he said.

But what if this opinion is very optimistic? For some time, the actuarians routinely increased the expected age of 1.5 percent annually to calculate more routine improvements in health and lifestyle. But it is not impossible to imagine a new scenario for more clear improvements.

One modern Four years study In patients with obesity and pre -existing cardiovascular conditions, I found that the possibility of death, heart attack, or stroke was 20 percent less over a period of four years for people who take a second for a placebo.

It took decades to the last major transformation of longevity-a sharp decrease in smoking rates-to enjoy many Western societies (even if the granulum pendant disrupted this long-term trend). Since the 1960s, the average life expectancy increased 10-15 percent to about 80 years In most parts of Western Europe, for example. As my colleague John Bern Murdoch It has indicatedThe creation of one drug is now a similar dramatic improvement, but it is likely to be for months and years instead Less than 12 percent.

Of course, the uncertainty remains. Long -term effects of Smaglutide are completely unknown. Some side effects It may be outside the country. The results of the research may not increase the population. However, some experts are convinced that innovation can be similar to the treatment of large cancer in terms of the potential effect of the population. “It is exactly the type of development that changes the game that insurance companies must plan,” said Stewart McDonald, a LCP.

For health insurance companies (and in fact public health systems), long -term cuts in the treatment of chronic diseases can compensate for a major leap in the cost of treatment in advance. But it seems that the opposite is likely to apply to life companies and pensions. For their councils and their organizers – as well as reinsurance companies that may prepare them from the risk of longevity – survival may not be a longer choice for a longer period.

Patrick.jnkins@ft.com

This article has been modified to clarify the study source for a period of four years in obesity