Walgreens is wading into the GLP-1 market.

The retail pharmacy giant announced on Feb. 26 a program called Walgreens Weight Management that offers on-demand virtual visits with clinicians as part of a personalized weight loss plan, including prescriptions for GLP-1s. The program has no monthly fee and costs $49 per visit.

Available in 28 states, the program is designed specifically for eligible self-pay patients whose employer insurance doesn’t cover GLP-1s. Only about 20% of large employers (those with more than 200 workers) currently cover GLP-1s for weight loss, according to KFF data.

Walgreens is also offering Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy pill and injection on its Rx Savings Finder tool for $149 and $199, respectively, per month.

The move comes after years of turbulence for the chain.—MA

Big Tech is moving full force ahead on healthcare AI.

On March 5, tech giant Salesforce announced the release of six new agentic AI tools for the medical industry. These agents will work on everything from referrals to identifying infectious disease patterns, per a press release. All tools will be under Agentforce Health, a library of AI software that the company launched in February 2025.

It’s also another example of a major tech company increasing its presence in healthcare as AI becomes more popular, as Amazon and Google have recently done.

“Our macro thesis is around how can we give time back to clinicians and reduce time in paperwork?” Amit Khanna, SVP and general manager for health and life sciences at Salesforce, told us.

But this isn’t Salesforce’s first foray into healthcare.—CM

Employers grew more concerned about the high cost of pharmaceutical drugs last year, even as the White House rolled out a series of policies intended to lower prices of some popular medications.

Nearly three-quarters of employers said they were moderately, very, or extremely concerned about pharmacy costs being “unsustainable” in 2025, according to a recent report from NFP, a benefits consultancy that’s part of Aon. That’s up from 67% who expressed moderate to extreme concern about pharmacy costs in 2024.

The growing focus on pharmacy spending comes as employer health costs are projected to rise more than 9% this year, driven in part by coverage of costly GLP-1 medications for weight loss. Managing GLP-1 spending has become a strategy of its own, according to one NFP leader, who advocated for collaboration among CHROs, CFOs, and corporate boards to address this issue.

Keep reading on HR Brew.—CV

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