On April 23, 2026, telehealth platform Ro (formerly Roman) announced aggressive price cuts to its Body Membership program for GLP-1 weight-loss subscribers, intensifying a competitive war with rival Hims & Hers Health. New pricing starts at $39 for the first month, falls to $74/month on annual prepay (a 50% discount that translates to roughly $900 in annual savings), and tops out at $149/month on a rolling monthly plan. The bundle includes physician visits, coaching support, lab access, and prescriptions for branded GLP-1 therapies including Novo Nordisk's Wegovy, Eli Lilly's Zepbound, and Lilly's recently-launched oral Foundayo (orforglipron, available on the Ro platform since April 9).

Why It Matters

GLP-1 cross-subsidizes the rest of telehealth's product mix. ED telehealth — the segment that put both Hims and Ro on the map — has been a quiet but profitable category for years. As GLP-1 margins compress to attract subscribers at scale, both platforms face pressure to either raise ED/sexual health prices, accept thinner margins overall, or use weight-loss subscribers as a customer-acquisition funnel for higher-margin specialties. The Ro move tells the market that competitive intensity in telehealth is now equal to traditional retail pharmacy — and that's bad news for the longstanding "telehealth premium" pricing model.

HIMS shares slipped 3% in premarket trading on the news, reversing a portion of the 25%+ rally HIMS had posted since April 15 on the back of HHS Secretary RFK Jr.'s peptide-policy signal. Ro CEO Zachariah Reitano said on X that the new annual pricing could undercut retail pharmacy GLP-1 access — including CVS Health — for the same medications.

The price war has direct implications for the male sexual health telehealth segment, where Ro and Hims compete head-to-head on ED, hair loss, and testosterone replacement. Ro's willingness to compress margins on its highest-volume category (weight-loss) creates pricing pressure across the company's broader formulary and signals to investors that telehealth has shifted from "growth at any price" to subscription-margin compression. Bank of America had previously raised the HIMS price target to $30 on April 16 and to $25 earlier in the month on the FDA peptide review news; the Ro pricing move is the first material competitive headwind since.

Ro and Hims are the two largest US direct-to-consumer telehealth platforms by category coverage, both founded around 2017, both having pivoted aggressively into GLP-1 weight-loss in 2024–2025 as compounded semaglutide volumes exploded under the FDA's shortage list. Ro is privately held; Hims & Hers trades on NYSE under HIMS.

Sources

Update — 2026-04-28

Initial entry — story first created.

Update — 2026-05-02

The same day Ro cut prices (April 23), Hims & Hers fired back by announcing direct access to Eli Lilly's full FDA-approved GLP-1 lineup on its platform — the most consequential pharma-telehealth partnership in the GLP-1 era. Providers on Hims & Hers can now route prescriptions for Zepbound vials and KwikPen, plus Lilly's oral Foundayo (orforglipron), directly to LillyDirect pharmacy with self-pay pricing for Hims & Hers customers. HIMS shares reversed course, rising approximately 7% on the announcement after the earlier 3% premarket dip. Hims & Hers had previously announced a Novo Nordisk Wegovy partnership in March, meaning HIMS now has direct access to both major GLP-1 manufacturers' branded products simultaneously — a position no other DTC telehealth platform currently holds.

The April 23 dual-news day reframes the competitive dynamic: Ro is competing on price, Hims is competing on supply-side relationships. Eli Lilly hiring on Hims's part (the company hired Lilly's former PR chief Travis Bond in March per Bloomberg) helped land the partnership. Both moves come into focus before HIMS's Q1 2026 earnings call on May 11, which will be the first quarter to fully reflect the pivoted strategy.

Concurrent pressure from Amazon One Medical's $25/month GLP-1 launch (April 21) means three of the largest US healthcare-and-retail-distribution platforms are now in a coordinated push on the category. For ED and male sexual health — the segment that originally built both Hims and Ro — the implication remains that GLP-1 customer acquisition is being subsidized by future cross-sell into higher-margin specialties, and the platform that wins the GLP-1 acquisition war is positioned to dominate the broader telehealth category.

New Sources