Walmart will make Ozempic and Mounjaro free for staff with Type 2 diabetes in 2027

What Walmart told its 1.6 million US workers

Walmart's chief people officer, Donna Morris, set out the changes in a letter to employees on 13 October. The no-cost list covers more than 250 generic, brand-name and specialty medicines. It includes certain insulin products, inhalers, and treatments for hemophilia and multiple sclerosis. Novo Nordisk's Ozempic and Eli Lilly's Mounjaro are on it for people with Type 2 diabetes, after a new prior authorization. Walmart confirmed the details to CNBC the same day.

The company employs about 1.6 million people in the US. It has roughly 2.1 million worldwide at the end of fiscal 2026.

A diabetes diagnosis, an eligible plan and a new approval decide who pays nothing. Walmart has not publicly released the criteria its reviewers will use.

The Food and Drug Administration approved Ozempic and Mounjaro to treat Type 2 diabetes. The same active ingredients, semaglutide and tirzepatide, also appear in Wegovy and Zepbound for weight management. Walmart's benefit follows the diabetes approval only. A worker managing diabetes can see a monthly drug bill disappear. A colleague using the same molecule for weight loss sees no change.

The divide the benefit exposes

Large employers have been trimming weight-loss coverage, not adding it.

A Mercer study found 6% of large employers are cutting GLP-1 coverage for weight loss this year. Another 5% are considering it. Pepsi, Starbucks, Lowe's, Cigna, PwC and several state governments are among those that have cut. A Business Group on Health survey of 105 employers put coverage for weight management at 67%. Of those, 72% said they were likely to continue in 2027 and 10% said they likely would not.

The two surveys disagree on the size of that group. Mercer puts it near half, and Business Group on Health puts it at 67%.

GoodRx research found about 12 million people were on plans that dropped coverage for Zepbound between 2025 and 2026. About 12 million were on plans that dropped Wegovy.

The fine print: prior authorization and a higher premium

Most Walmart medical plans carry the benefit, not all. The plan a worker picks for 2027 decides. A prior authorization is a review in which the health plan confirms a prescription meets its rules before it pays.

The premium still rises. The starting medical plan costs $39.80 per biweekly pay period in 2027, up $1.50 from $38.30 this year.

Walmart says that increase is smaller than last year's, and that starting-plan premiums have run about 30% below the national average in recent years. The company described the package as the product of years of planning that let it improve benefits without cutting coverage or significantly raising premiums.

Why employers are squeezed

The backdrop is cost. Total health benefit costs per employee will rise more than 8% next year, the highest jump since 2003, a Marsh survey of 1,800 US employers found.

Prescriptions drive much of that. CMS expects total spending on prescription medicines to top $560 billion in 2026, an increase of 8.3%. John Poisal, deputy director at the National Health Statistics Group at CMS, told reporters that "a big part of this is GLP-1s". The Employee Benefit Research Institute estimates broad GLP-1 coverage can raise monthly premiums on employer-sponsored plans by as much as 14%. The Business Group on Health survey found most of its 105 employers cover GLP-1s for diabetes.

What happens next

Enrolment for 2027 closes on 6 November.