A billion-dollar diabetes company that’s previously refused to write Ozempic prescriptions is now changing its tune — right as the drugs are about to get a lot cheaper.
Omada Health, the chronic care startup that went public in June, said Thursday it would start prescribing GLP-1 medications for obesity. Until now, Omada has stayed out of the GLP-1 prescribing game, leaving those decisions up to patients’ primary care providers.
The company’s timing was fortuitous. A few hours earlier, President Donald Trump announced a deal to significantly lower the out-of-pocket cost of GLP-1 drugs, in the range of $50 to $350 a month. Currently, a monthly dose can cost over $1,000.
CEO Sean Duffy said during Omada’s third-quarter earnings call on Thursday that the company will start offering GLP-1 prescriptions in the first half of 2026. Duffy previously told Business Insider at the time of Omada’s June IPO that he wasn’t seeing consistent demand from patients to obtain their GLP-1 prescriptions from Omada and that the company was open to prescribing GLP-1s if it saw more member demand.
“We’ll let the members speak, so if all of a sudden 10 out of 10 members next year are like, please, Omada, help me here, we may, but that’s not our strategy right now,” he said at the time.
Omada’s ultimate decision to prescribe GLP-1s wasn’t made according to member demand, however, Duffy told Business Insider on Friday. Instead, Omada received feedback from primary care providers, as well as from its employer customers, that the rapidly changing GLP-1 landscape was becoming too complex a burden for the providers to bear on their own.
“Different types of meds at different price points were the key reason in deciding it’s time to describe,” Duffy said. He added that many employers expect their overall costs to rise following the potential FDA approval of oral versions of GLP-1 drugs. The pills are expected to be much cheaper, but employers assume many more patients will want to take the drugs in that form, raising their total spend, Duffy said.
The Trump administration’s Thursday announcement, Duffy said, “underscores exactly why we’re offering prescribing.”
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Omada’s “year of the Gs”
The Trump administration said Thursday it had notched deals with drugmakers Eli Lilly and Novo Nordisk to get discounts on their GLP-1 drugs for weight loss.
It’s the administration’s latest effort to offer discounted drugs to Americans on behalf of the federal government, via its TrumpRx program, unveiled in late September.
Through TrumpRx, Wegovy and Zepbound will start around $350 per month for patients not using insurance, officials said. The administration aims to drop the price to $250 within two years. For the first time, Medicare will cover GLP-1 drugs for weight loss, with some qualifying Medicare patients paying just a $50 monthly co-pay for the medications.
Oral versions of the drugs, which are still under development and haven’t been approved by the FDA, will be available via TrumpRx at no more than $149 a month after they hit the market.
Omada Health, founded in 2011, has been supporting members on GLP-1s for years. The company will pair its new GLP-1 prescribing program with human and AI coaching to support members before, during, and after taking GLP-1 medications, including to help patients safely taper off their prescriptions.
The company is aiming to keep employers’ drug costs in check while helping patients avoid the rebound weight gain that’s common after stopping GLP-1s. Employers can choose to opt out of offering GLP-1 prescriptions, Duffy said.
Duffy said Omada will use a third-party telehealth solution to source clinicians to prescribe the GLP-1s. He declined to name the partner Omada plans to work with.
Omada Health had previously been cautious about its AI strategy, too, holding off on releasing consumer-facing AI tools until a few months ago. But Duffy said during the earnings call that Omada plans to double down on GLP-1s and generative AI next year as it enters “the year of the Gs.”
Omada’s third-quarter earnings and revenue beat investor expectations, but the stock had dropped over 7% by midday Friday. Analysts have previously expressed concerns that Omada isn’t yet profitable (though the company narrowed its losses to about $3.2 million in the third quarter) and faces an increasingly competitive digital health market as it looks to compete with dozens of online GLP-1 prescribers.
Duffy emphasized that Omada posted a strong quarter and said he’s learning to ignore the stock jumps and tumbles.
“Investors who are long say they’re not worried about the volatility. I’ve stopped trying to guess. It’s what we signed up for,” he said.
