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Telemedicine’s Evolution and Expanding Access to Obesity, Specialty Care
George Jones of UpScript Health discusses telemedicine's evolution from basic e-prescribing to real-time video consultations, expanding treatment beyond primary care.
On this episode of Managed Care Cast, we speak with George Jones, chief operating officer at UpScript Health, an online pioneer of eprescribing 20 years ago, to learn how telemedicine has progressed from asynchronous conferencing to real-time video consultation, enabling the treatment of complex conditions beyond primary care. Although technology access remains a challenge for some, Jones emphasizes telemedicine’s potential to reduce wait times and improve efficiency, especially for conditions requiring specialist care.
A major theme in the telemedicine space is access to obesity treatments, particularly glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) medications like semaglutide, which was recently included on the second list of drugs for price negotiation under the Inflation Reduction Act. We also discuss how Medicare’s limited obesity coverage may reduce the impact of these negotiations, advocating for policies and step therapy models that can help to lower patient costs, and the regulatory concerns associated with compounded GLP-1s as an alternative, knowing that these medications are prepared outside FDA oversight.
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Managed Care Reflections: A Q&A With A. Mark Fendrick, MD, and Michael E. Chernew, PhD
December 2nd 2025To mark the 30th anniversary of The American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC), each issue in 2025 includes a special feature: reflections from a thought leader on what has changed—and what has not—over the past 3 decades and what’s next for managed care. The December issue features a conversation with AJMC Co–Editors in Chief A. Mark Fendrick, MD, director of the Center for Value-Based Insurance Design and a professor at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; and Michael E. Chernew, PhD, the Leonard D. Schaeffer Professor of Health Care Policy and the director of the Healthcare Markets and Regulation Lab at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts.
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