According to Barmer's boss, weight loss injections could soon become a cash register benefit

Barmer boss's assessment Could the weight loss injection become a cash benefit? As of: November 12, 2026 • 10:13 a.m

From lifestyle medicine to health insurance benefit? According to Barmer boss Straub, the weight loss injection could soon be available with a prescription. In his opinion, proof of diet or exercise should not be necessary.

According to outgoing Barmer boss Christoph Straub, the weight loss injection could be paid for by statutory health insurance companies in the future. “I assume that we will probably also include the weight loss injection as a treatment option,” Straub told the NPG editorial team’s partner newspapers.

According to Straub, the costs for health insurance companies do not have to rise dramatically. However, the prerequisite is that drug prices are more closely aligned with actual benefits. “With a view to the cost consequences, the price can and must be reduced in negotiations,” he emphasized.

In the Barmer boss's opinion, patients who are morbidly overweight should not have to prove that they have already tried unsuccessfully to lose weight through diets or more exercise before such therapy. Such a requirement has now also been waived for surgical interventions to treat obesity. “The same should then apply to injection therapy,” said Straub. "We don't ask a smoker to give up smoking before we operate on their lung cancer."

At the same time, Straub noted that the treatment is not suitable for every patient: “But injection therapy is not the solution for everything and everyone.”

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In the past, the head of the AOK federal association, Carola Reimann, took a much more skeptical stance on the assumption of costs. She warned of a significant financial burden on statutory health insurance.

According to their calculations, if all legally insured people with obesity and a body mass index (BMI) of at least 30 were regularly treated with weight-loss injections, annual costs of around 45 billion euros could arise. With a BMI of at least 35, it would be around 14 billion euros. Reimann described this as a “maximum scenario”.

In Germany, weight loss injections that are explicitly approved for the treatment of obesity are currently classified as lifestyle medicines and cannot be prescribed as a health insurance benefit. However, some active ingredients can be prescribed to treat other diseases, such as type 2 diabetes.

This topic in the program: MDR aktuell - The news radio | News | 11/12/2026 | 6:00 am