Most evidence about stopping comes from trials that randomize people to withdrawal or from databases where people stopped for their own reasons. Japan runs the experiment as policy: everyone stops on a schedule set by a rule [1]. That makes this small cohort unusually informative about a question this desk prices constantly, in what six-month discontinuation does to a prepay.
On treatment, results were what the trials predict. Weight change reached a partial plateau across months 10 to 14 at -16.3%, -16.1% and -15.5%, and stood at -16.0% at the month-16 endpoint. Then the cap took effect. Of the patients followed past it, 21 of 22 had regained weight within two months and 10 of 12 within six.
Indexed to six months before treatment started, the cohort was 14.4% below baseline at the month-16 endpoint and 7.0% below it at month 22. Six months after a rule told them to stop, about half of what had been achieved was gone. The authors offer this as a basis for examining whether a mandated stop is compatible with obesity being a chronic condition, which is a careful way of putting a pointed question.
The mandated waiting period produced its own finding. During the required six-month lifestyle phase before any drug was allowed, the post-surgery rescue cohort gained weight (+2.28 kg on average, with 69% gaining) while the primary cohort stayed roughly stable (-0.65 kg, p = 0.004). For one group, the rule that made them wait made them worse before treatment started — which is the access-friction cost this desk measures from the other side in what prior authorization costs you.
For a self-pay buyer in a market with no such rule, the transferable point is about planning rather than policy. If a price structure — a fixed-term plan, a prepaid block, a supply that runs out — imposes a stop, this is roughly what that stop does on the scale. Pricing a course as a finite purchase and pricing it as an ongoing one are different decisions, as why falling prices and annual plans do not mix sets out.