State coverage
Alaska
Medicaid, for obesity: Does not cover. The conditions and the appeal deadline are in the summary below.
At a glance
- Medicaid, for obesity
- The pharmacy manual excludes obesity drugs by name; the statewide drug list carries GLP-1s for diabetes only.
Alaska is one of the more direct answers on this site because the exclusion is written into the pharmacy manual itself, not left for a reader to infer from a drug list's silence. The manual's non-covered services section names obesity medications alongside infertility and baldness drugs — the same sentence structure a lot of states use for a small, deliberately excluded category.
The state's Preferred Drug List backs that up from a different angle. It carries a full "Hypoglycemics, Incretin Mimetics/Enhancers" class with Ozempic, Rybelsus, Victoza and Mounjaro all listed for diabetes — but nowhere across the document's several hundred drug-class entries does Wegovy, Zepbound or Saxenda appear, under any name or status. We also checked the state's Prior Authorization Medication List and its PA-criteria index page directly, reading the live page text rather than just its file names; neither carries an obesity, weight-loss or GLP-1 entry either. Three separate documents, read on the same day, agree with each other.
One live host on this site did not cooperate: manuals.medicaidalaska.com, which carries the tribal and general provider manuals and would likely restate the same exclusion, would not resolve at all when queried — the domain itself failed to resolve, not a blocked or throttled request. That page is not part of the record below because it could not be opened, not because it says anything different from what did open.
What we could verify for Alaska
The manual states the exclusion directly, in a short list next to two other narrow exclusions. Under "Non-covered Pharmacy Services," it reads: "The services listed below are non-covered pharmacy services... Medications used to treat infertility, obesity, or baldness."
Alaska Department of Health, Alaska Medicaid Pharmacy Provider Manual (Pharmacy Services, Policies, and Procedures), effective November 2023 · source
The statewide drug list confirms the exclusion by omission across its entire diabetes class. Under "HYPOGLYCEMICS, INCRETIN MIMETICS/ENHANCERS," the list carries OZEMPIC (PEN), OZEMPIC (SUBCUTANE.), RYBELSUS (ORAL), VICTOZA (SUBCUTANE.), LIRAGLUTIDE and MOUNJARO (SUBCUTANE.), each with a PDL status effective date of 11/1/2025 — but no line for WEGOVY, WEGOVY HD, ZEPBOUND or SAXENDA appears anywhere in the document, posted 04/30/2026 for an effective date of 06/01/2026.
Alaska Department of Health, Alaska Medicaid Preferred Drug List (PDL), effective June 2026 · source
The recipient handbook describes how to ask for a fair hearing but does not itself state a filing deadline: "A Fair Hearing is a chance for you to tell an administrative law judge why you think that the Department of Health is incorrect... A fair hearing request can be submitted by telephone or via text, email, USPS mail, or by fax," addressed to "Alaska Medicaid Fiscal Agent, Attention: Fair Hearings, PO Box 240808, Anchorage, AK 99524."
State of Alaska, Department of Health, Alaska Medicaid Recipient Handbook, effective April 2025 · source
The deadline the handbook omits is set in regulation: "a request for a hearing within the scope of 7 AAC 49.020 must be made to the department in writing by a recipient, or by a legal representative acting on the recipient's behalf, not later than 30 days after the date of the notice required under 7 AAC 49.060."
Alaska Administrative Code, 7 AAC 49.030 (Request for hearing) · source
Medicaid is only one of the routes. If you have a commercial or employer plan, the rules are different and are on the employer plans page; Medicare has a federal rule of its own, on the Part D page.
If the appeal fails, or you cannot wait
Cash-pay telehealth is the fallback, not the bargain: you pay the whole cost yourself, and a covered prescription is almost always cheaper than any of these. Use this route when coverage has actually been exhausted, or when you need to start while an appeal runs.
These companies pay us a commission if you start care through the links below. That is how this site is funded, and it does not change what is written above. How we pay for this.
| Company | What we found on its own site |
|---|---|
| CoreAge RxCheck availability | Advertises $99 a month for compounded semaglutide, flat across doses. Read the terms before you sign up: the lander our link opens has shown $149 rather than $99, and a consultation fee can be charged on top and may not be refundable. |
| OakCheck availability | Flat price across doses, free shipping with supplies. |
| Care Bare RxCheck availability | Names its pharmacies with addresses; sells brand Ozempic as well as compounded. |
| Gala HealthCheck availability | All doses one price, but the advertised rate needs a yearly subscription. |
| Synergy RxCheck availability | Providers licensed in your state; publishes no GLP-1 price before the consult. |
| Breeze MedsCheck availability | Serves all 50 states; publishes a starting price only. |
| Direct MedsCheck availability | No monthly membership, and one price at every dose. The lander our link opens starts at $147 and reads its own discount two ways on the same screen: the banner across the top says $150 off, the product tiles below it say up to $200 off. |
| FoundCheck availability | Bills the clinical visits through insurance where it is in network, with the medication charged separately. Read its Medicare Part D route closely: it advertises brand GLP-1s from $50 a month, and the footnote under that offer says the $50 does not count toward your Part D deductible or out-of-pocket maximum, and that Extra Help does not apply. |
| EdenCheck availability | Two different prices for the same drug depending on which door you come in. The lander our link opens advertises $99 a month for semaglutide, held at every dose, with no membership fee. Eden's own weight-loss page, read the same day, offers it from $99 a month plus an Eden Membership, and the footnote there says the membership is $39 the first month and $99 after, and that medication is not available without one. |
| ShedRxCheck availability | Publishes no price before the questionnaire: you answer it, pick a plan and see the cost at checkout. Sells injections plus needle-free drops and lozenges, and a footnote on the same page names sixteen states where the oral forms are not available. |
| TrimiCheck availability | Compounded tirzepatide at $125 a month and semaglutide at $99, each on the annual plan and each the same price at every dose. One membership covers the medication, the clinician visits and shipping. |
| He & She MDCheck availability | Advertises semaglutide from $99 a month and charges only if a prescription is written. The printed tiers are higher than the headline: $139 a month on six months, billed $834 at once, and $149 a month on three. GLP-1s ship to every state except Louisiana. |
| HealthRXCheck availability | Compounded semaglutide from $133 a month on a three-month plan and as low as $99 on twelve; tirzepatide from $209, as low as $179. ⚠ The page states its member reviews are illustrative composites rather than real patients. |
| Pallas HealthCheck availability | Compounded semaglutide at $139 for the first month and then $597 every twelve weeks, and tirzepatide at $179 then $897. ⚠ The page discloses that some of its content is AI-generated and that its imagery uses models rather than patients. |
| MEDGmCheck availability | GLP-1 injections from $179 and tablets from $249, with brand-name options priced as a membership plus the cost of the drug — $99 for Zepbound or Wegovy, $171 for Ozempic. ⚠ It discloses AI-generated content and actor imagery beside more than twenty named patient testimonials. |
| Bodybuilding Health+Check availability | Compounded tirzepatide runs $174.67 to $209 a month depending how many months are bought at once, and semaglutide is tiered the same way. ⚠ The program is listed as Bodybuilding.com; the page this link opens brands itself Bodybuilding Health+ and is operated by Dynamo Group LLC. |
| Strut HealthCheck availability | A multi-category telehealth storefront — sexual health, testosterone, hair, skin, peptides, menopause — where weight loss is one tile among six. It publishes no price for a GLP-1, or for anything else, on the page this link opens. |
| RxSpan MDCheck availability | Multi-category telehealth that promises transparent pricing and no hidden fees, and then publishes no price at all — not for a GLP-1 and not for any other product — on the page this link opens. |
Prices in those notes were read from each company's own site in August 2026 and September 2026, and they change often. Check the current number before you buy.
Where this comes from
- Alaska Department of Health, Alaska Medicaid Pharmacy Provider Manual (Pharmacy Services, Policies, and Procedures), effective November 2023 — extranet-sp.dhss.alaska.gov/hcs/medicaidalaska/Provider/Manuals/Pharmacy
- Alaska Department of Health, Alaska Medicaid Preferred Drug List (PDL), effective June 2026 — health.alaska.gov/media/dq0ohdan/pdl_effective-date_20260601.pdf
- State of Alaska, Department of Health, Alaska Medicaid Recipient Handbook, effective April 2025 — health.alaska.gov/media/ux4ds44w/ada-compliant-2025-medicaid-recipient-h
- Alaska Administrative Code, 7 AAC 49.030 (Request for hearing) — akrules.elaws.us/aac/7.49.030
Every state we have verified is in the coverage matrix. Appeal routes and deadlines are on the procedures page.