Michigans Medicaid program is restricting GLP-1 coverage to select high-risk populations as a cost-saving measure projected to trim $240 million in weight-loss drug spending, and multiple Blue Cross affiliates in Vermont and North Dakota have announced similar exclusions or structural shifts for 2026
How it works: AOD-9604 is a synthetic peptide copied from a small fragment of GHspecifically, from the fat-burning region at the tail end of the hormone
Protein intake becomes especially important on GLP-1 therapy because significant weight loss can include lean muscle mass if protein intake is inadequate
For more about what you can deduct as medical expenses, check out this prior post
Its defining structural feature is the gamma-glutamyl linkage: the glutamate residue is joined through its side-chain carboxyl rather than the usual alpha-peptide bond, which makes the molecule resistant to most intracellular peptidases and means it is cleaved almost exclusively by gamma-glutamyl transpeptidase at the outer cell surface (Zhang, Forman and Choi, Methods in Enzymology, 2005)
Dermatologic monitoring remains mandatory in the EU treatment program