Buying safely
How to tell a licensed program from a bad one before you hand over a card.
Buying safelyHow to get a GLP-1 covered by insurance, in the order it actually worksThere are four gates and most people fight the wrong one first. Before any clinical criterion applies, your employer has to have bought the weight-loss drug category at all, and if they did not, no BMI number and no comorbidity will change the answer. Once past that, the published criteria across the major insurers are strikingly consistent: BMI of 30 or more, or 27 with a weight-related condition, plus a documented period of lifestyle change, plus roughly 5 percent weight loss to stay approved at renewal.Buying safelyYour GLP-1 was denied. Which kind of no was it?Three different things get called a denial and only two are worth appealing. If your plan excludes weight-loss drugs as a category, the refusal is not about you and no amount of clinical documentation moves it. If it is step therapy or unmet criteria, both are answerable, and the answer is usually documentation rather than argument. Here is how to tell which one you got, and what each needs.Buying safelyHow to check a GLP-1 seller is legitimate, in about ten minutesYou can verify most of what matters yourself, and it takes about ten minutes. Look the company up on LegitScript, check the dispensing pharmacy's licence with the state board of pharmacy it names, confirm there is a real prescriber and a real prescription, find a physical address, and be suspicious of any price far below the market floor. We verify prices, fees, state coverage and reviews across every program we track and re-check them weekly. We do not audit pharmacies or test product, and any site telling you it does is worth a second look.Buying safelyHow to get prescribed a GLP-1, and what the label actually requiresAlmost every page on this says you need a BMI of 30, or 27 with a weight-related condition. Those numbers are not what the indication says. Wegovy's label describes adults with obesity, or adults with overweight and at least one weight-related comorbid condition, and it separately lists two routes most people have never heard of: reducing cardiovascular risk in adults with established cardiovascular disease, and treating MASH with moderate to advanced liver fibrosis. Whether you qualify is a clinical judgement, and it is a wider door than the BMI number suggests.