Employers who are wary of paying for workers’ pricey weight-loss drugs are discovering a workaround: Offer coverage through a telehealth vendor and split the cost.
Why it matters: Workers want access to GLP-1s, and employers want to avoid the cost of obesity-related illness. But fewer than 20% of employers covered the medications for weight loss last year, according to KFF — and some later ditched them due to cost pressures.
Driving the news: Telehealth company eMed is partnering with CVS Caremark on a new option for employers who don’t want to shoulder the full cost of GLP-1s for obesity but still want to provide some access, eMed told Axios exclusively.
- It’s one of the first eMed offerings under CEO Linda Yaccarino, who took the helm last summer after stepping down as CEO of Elon Musk’s social discourse app X.
- Through an arrangement with pharmacy benefit manager CVS Caremark, eligible workers can buy the drugs online through eMed and get comprehensive weight management services, including help managing side effects.
- Employers can choose how much they want to subsidize the drugs prescribed through eMed.
The new offering combines two emerging trends: online cash purchases of drugs and secondary coverage arrangements that could keep workplace health premiums from soaring.
- The GLP-1 prices offered through the arrangement are “the most cost-effective price point that’s available in the market,” Yaccarino said in an interview.
Where it stands: Management consulting firm Aon, which invests in eMed, piloted a similar program with eMed for its own workers starting last year.
- About 9% of the eligible employees at Aon have enrolled, Lisa Stevens, the company’s chief administrative officer, said in an email.
- “Colleagues are staying on the medication longer and seeing meaningful improvements in weight and BMI compared to before the program,” Stevens said.
- CVS views the eMed partnership as another way of expanding GLP-1 access through its business that manages prescription benefits for up to 30 million Americans, the company told Axios.
How it works: Employers that offer eMed GLP-1 prescribing are giving their workers access to around-the-clock clinical support for managing side effects, weekly check-ins and biannual blood testing, Yaccarino said.
- EMed’s internal reviews show that its comprehensive care makes it more likely that people will take their medications when they’re supposed to.
- That makes for an even better deal for employers, she said, because people will stay on GLP-1s long enough to see health improvements — which brings down overall health costs.
Zoom out: Other telehealth companies are starting to offer employer-focused arrangements.
- WeightWatchers lets employers pay to offer its weight management program as a workplace benefit and offset the cost of the drugs by up to 75%.
- Alternatively, some employers are funding health reimbursement accounts for employees to use pre-tax dollars to cover some of the cost of GLP-1s.
What we’re watching: Ancillary benefit arrangements for GLP-1 access could become popular if employers can cut deals with telehealth companies for preferred pricing, said Paul Fronstin, director of health benefits research at the Employee Benefit Research Institute.
Yes, but: Such benefits may have less appeal if the drugs’ cash-pay prices keep coming down and employers feel their workers can access GLP-1s just fine on their own, he said.
Editor’s note: The story has been updated to clarify that Aon piloted a similar eMed program for its own employees, but not the same eMed-CVS program.