Town employees across the South Shore are losing health insurance coverage of GLP-1s as multiple municipal insurance consortiums stop offering the expensive and increasingly popular weight-loss drugs, which are drivers of rapidly rising healthcare costs.
Employee health insurance in Norwell, Duxbury, Marshfield, Plymouth, Cohasset, Scituate and Hanover does not currently cover GLP-1s for non-diabetic patients, and Kingston and Hingham and will cease covering the drugs for non-diabetic patients in July.
Limiting health insurance rates is one way municipalities in the region are trying to manage rising costs. Several towns are facing multi-million dollar level service deficits as the cost of electricity, transportation, salaries and more climb faster than tax and new growth revenue. Health insurance plans that do not cover GLP-1s for non-diabetic patients can be significantly cheaper because GLP-1s are high-cost and high-demand, insurance companies say.
“The unexpected increase in GLP-1 drugs being used for weight loss — a high-cost treatment for this condition — has added billions in unanticipated expenses to the system,” read a press release from the Massachusetts Interlocal Insurance Association, the insurance company Norwell will use in fiscal year 2027. MIIA called GLP-1s “the largest driver in pharmacy spending trends.”
GLP-1s like Ozempic, Wegovy and Zepbound, originally used to balance blood sugar levels in diabetes patients, are now commonly prescribed for weight loss because they can suppress hunger signals and slow the movement of food in the digestive system.
Mayflower Municipal Health Group, an insurance consortium operated by Plymouth County for municipal employees that will eliminate GLP-1 coverage for non-diabetic patients July 1, estimated that premiums would rise by an additional 10 to 11% in fiscal year 2027 if it continued coverage. Even without GLP-1 coverage, rates for all of its individual plans will rise about 10%.
MMHG estimated that GLP-1s cost an average of $11,000 per year for one patient. Now, town employees will foot that bill.
Most 2026 plans offered by private health insurance companies Blue Cross Blue Shield and Harvard Pilgrim, as well the state-operated Group Insurance Commission and MIIA, a state-operated consortium for state and municipal employees, will not cover GLP-1s. Those four groups offer insurance to employees of Norwell, Duxbury, Marshfield, Plymouth, Cohasset, Hanover, Kingston, Hingham and Scituate, either directly or through MMHG.
The change has provided some financial relief to South Shore towns preparing tight fiscal year 2027 budgets.
In a March 10 select board meeting, James Boudreau, Town Administrator, said that the cost of health insurance for the town of Scituate would rise 11.6% between fiscal year 2026 and 2027—and that it would have risen by about 20 to 21% if the town continued offering GLP-1s.
“If we continue covering GLP-1s for weight loss, our forecasts show these drugs will drive an unsustainable increase in the cost of medical coverage for everyone—whether they take the medication or not,” read a press release from Blue Cross Blue Shield, which ended coverage January 1.
GLP-1s can drive up costs significantly even when prescribed to a relatively small percent of employees. In 2025, 7% of members enrolled in Duxbury employee health insurance accounted for 25% of GLP-1 pharmacy claims, said a report by the Hilb Group, a health insurance company. Still, Human Resources Director Jeanie Horn said that health insurance premiums were estimated to increase by 20% in fiscal year 2027 if Duxbury had opted to continue covering GLP-1s.
Even without GLP-1 coverage, health insurance premiums are hitting fiscal year 2027 budgets hard. The money appropriated in Plymouth’s fiscal year 2027 budget for health insurance is 13% higher than last year’s appropriation, from $39.1 million to $43.6 million.
But Cohasset saw a relatively small increase: an average of 2.9% for both individual and family plans. Hingham’s budget appropriation to employee health insurance increased by 7.1%, much less than its increase from fiscal year 2025 to 2026, 14.4%.
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