Walgreens enters the weight loss, telehealth markets

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.

Squaring up. With the new offering, Walgreens is positioning itself as a competitor against telehealth companies like Ro and Hims & Hers, which have profited millions selling compounded GLP-1s straight to consumers.

Hims & Hers reported on Feb. 23 it brought in $2.3 billion in revenue in 2025, up 59% from $1.5 billion in 2024. Comparatively, in 2023, before the company started selling GLP-1s, it brought in $872 million in revenue.

Walgreens’s weight loss program may be more attractive to some consumers compared to other telehealth options because of the lack of a monthly fee, Cherokee Layson-Wolf, a professor in the department of practice, sciences, and health outcomes research at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, told Healthcare Brew. Hims, for example, charges $199 per month for compounded GLP-1s, and Ro charges $145 per month for cash-pay customers.

“I think it definitely is going to be competitive against some of the others because of that perceived reduced cost,” Layson-Wolf said.

Another advantage to Walgreens’s program is the company offers telehealth visits from 7am to 11pm (Central) seven days a week, which gives much more access than the typical 9-to-5 primary care provider, according to Layson-Wolf.

“A lot of the people that I think might be drawn to these kinds of services could be individuals where maybe they’re struggling to get through these conversations with their in-person providers,” Layson-Wolf said.

The GLP-1 space is “very ripe” for Walgreens, Howie Forman, professor of management at Yale School of Management, told Healthcare Brew. JPMorgan Global Research projects the overall GLP-1 market will be worth $200 billion by 2030.

“In the current marketplace, Walgreens looks like they could be a better actor than Hims & Hers and certainly the more mom-and-pop compounding places,” Forman said. “I think Walgreens is trying to carve out a safe segment in the market that could be very lucrative for them.”

Hims & Hers has been facing legal trouble since it started selling a compounded version of Novo Nordisk’s Wegovy pill, which the telehealth company then quickly pulled from the market.

Hims & Hers didn’t respond to Healthcare Brew’s request for comment by publication. Ro declined to comment.

Zooming out. The move comes about six months after private equity firm Sycamore Partners officially bought Walgreens, transforming it into a private company after several years of turbulence. It also comes just weeks after the company announced plans to lay off 628 employees in Texas and Illinois.

The nonprofit watchdog Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) warned of potential layoffs at the time of the acquisition, and executive director Jim Baker said in a statement following the news that the layoffs “underscore the risks that come with turning essential healthcare providers into private equity portfolio companies.”

In addition to reducing staff, Sycamore has allegedly taken cost-cutting measures including eliminating paid holidays and adding products like vapes into Walgreens stores, Bloomberg reported.