Futter’s provider Henry Meds no longer offers compounded Tirzepatide injections, but allows patients to place bulk orders before phase-out. He continued to order orders for months of vials, but didn’t know what he would do when he used up. “I’m very nervous about what’s going to happen,” he said. “I’m poking out of every drop of each vial to stretch it a little longer.” (As of publication, Henry Meds has provided new and current patients with the ability to batch order 40 weeks of Semaglutide injections.
Jim Bertel, a 41-year-old Jim Bertel who lives in Colorado and credits Tirzepatide for changing his life, was also able to store his compound GLP-1 drugs before his provider stops selling it. He is not sure what he will do when he runs out later this month, and he is spending time searching for Reddit and Facebook forums to find which telemedicine companies are still offering versions of the drug. “Now, my plan is to take it monthly,” he said. “From provider to provider.”
Jessie, 40, who only asked for identification by her name, turned to a medical spa for more complex medications, and she could not get consistent access through insurance or primary care providers. Her provider initially wrote her Wegovy’s prescription, but she said it was “touch and walk”. When she is unavailable, she is able to supplement the composite version from the Med Spa. But late last year, Jesse received a letter from the insurance company saying that it would no longer cover Wegovy. Her primary care provider then stopped writing prescriptions for weight loss pills, saying they were too troublesome. She returned to the medical spa and was able to get a more complex Semaglutide in April, but the facility said there was no guarantee that supply would go forward. She is now considering buying medicine from Mexico because she often goes to San Diego to work. “It’s the same medicine, you don’t need a prescription, and it’s cheap,” she said. In Mexico, it’s possible to buy designer Wegovy for around $200 a month.
Spotty insurance coverage helps drive demand for composite GLP-1 products. Although Wegovy and Zepbound have approved patients with a body mass index over the age of 30 and have at least one patient with a weight-related condition 27 years or older, some insurance plans require higher standards for BMI or other coverage if drugs for obesity are covered. “The whole basic theme here is that this stigma and bias is not to see obesity as a disease that doesn’t treat obesity as a disease of cancer, diabetes and everything else,” said Florencia Halperin, an endocrinologist and chief medical officer at Form Health, an online medical weight loss clinic. “For cancer, you never let the employer say, ‘We’re not going to cover this.”
Amanda Bonello, founder and CEO of GLP-1 Collective, is a nonprofit organization designed to help patients get these drugs and is not surprised by the length of patients. Bonello herself has adopted more complex GLP-1 products, and he says the effects of these drugs are not just about the weight itself for many of the patients she talks to.
