Taylor Quandt of Green Bay, Wisconsin, has lost more than 300 pounds since joining Ilant Health, the company says. Her explanation for why it worked has little to do with a prescription. “Ilant Health didn’t just give me my life back—they did it by seeing me as a whole person rather than just a number on a scale,” she said.

That distinction sits at the center of a business bet. Elina Onitskansky founded Ilant Health in 2022 to treat obesity as a chronic disease , selling to employers and health plans rather than consumers. The New York startup has raised more than $22 million and shares financial risk tied to how its members do. As weight loss drugs reach millions more Americans, Ilant is wagering that the bigger opportunity lies in everything a prescription leaves out.

Women Are Nearly Twice As Likely As Men To Have Severe Obesity

More than 4 in 10 American women have obesity, and 12.1% have severe obesity compared with 6.7% of men. Many of those women meet a health system that sees a weight before it sees a patient . Onitskansky knows that firsthand: On her own weight-loss journey, clinicians often assumed she had never tried diet or exercise.

She also knows the system from the inside. Before founding Ilant, she was an associate partner at McKinsey & Company, and senior vice president and head of strategy at Molina Healthcare, which serves Medicaid and Medicare members. That vantage point shaped one of her earliest decisions: to skip the direct-to-consumer route most obesity startups took. “You’re often not accessing the people who need care the most,” Onitskansky explained when the company launched.

Instead, Ilant works through employers and health plans, including Medicaid and Medicare plans. It uses claims data and an algorithm that weighs medical, behavioral and social factors to match each person to the treatment most likely to work, whether surgery, medication, or intensive behavioral therapy. Among adults with a BMI of 30 or higher, 61% had no obesity diagnosis code in their insurance claims , according to a study that matched claims to clinical records in the Healthcare Integrated Research Database.

Weight Loss Creates Needs A Prescription Can’t Meet

GLP-1 medications such as Wegovy and Zepbound have changed what weight loss can look like. Staying on them is harder : Roughly one-third of patients stop within the first month, and nearly two-thirds within three months. Significant weight loss also brings new needs, from protecting muscle and bone to adjusting to a changed body.

Ilant pairs every member with an obesity medicine clinician, a registered dietitian, a licensed behavioral health specialist, and a peer navigator with lived experience. In September, it hired Kasey Goodpaster, Ph.D., who spent a decade as director of behavioral health at Cleveland Clinic’s Bariatric and Metabolic Institute. Christina Link joined as director of nutrition.

Goodpaster argues that information is rarely what holds patients back. “We find that most members already have a good idea of ‘what’ to do in terms of lifestyle changes by the time they enter our program,” she noted. “The behavioral health piece is more about the ‘how.’”

Ilant reports that members improve their body composition as they lose weight, gaining about one percentage point of muscle mass and shedding about two points of body fat over six months. Those are company figures, not peer-reviewed results. Still, they point to an issue the GLP-1 boom has largely skipped: not just how much weight people lose, but whether they lose it in a healthy way.

Why Ilant Health Shares Financial Risk With Employers

Employers feel the GLP-1 boom in their claims data. Weight loss GLP-1s made up about 10.5% of employers’ total annual claims in 2025, up from 6.9% in 2023. Onitskansky frames the bind plainly. Employers and health plans “are faced with either expanding access and watching pharmaceutical costs rise dramatically, or restricting access and risking rising chronic disease and cost,” she said.”That’s not a sustainable model.”.

Ilant’s answer is to put its own revenue on the line. Rather than billing fee-for-service, it takes on both upside and downside financial risk, which Onitskansky described as showing members “we only do well when they do well”. In practice, Ilant can lose money when its members don’t get healthier.

The company also contracts directly with drugmakers. Employers can buy Eli Lilly obesity medicines at transparent prices through Lilly’s Employer Connect program. Ilant also works with Novo Nordisk. A January collaboration with Prescryptive Health added another route to transparent GLP-1 pricing.

That combination persuaded Cornucopian Capital to lead Ilant’s $15 million Series A in June. Managing Partner Aryeh Ganz calls obesity “one of healthcare’s greatest unmet challenges.” As he sees it, “The most enduring healthcare companies don’t force a tradeoff between better outcomes and lower costs—they create both, and that’s exactly what we saw in Ilant.”

Medicaid And Medicare Are Expanding Coverage Of Weight Loss Drugs

Public payers are moving in Ilant’s direction. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ BALANCE Model, which began in Medicaid in May 2026, negotiates lower GLP-1 prices with drugmakers and pairs medication access with lifestyle support . Medicare beneficiaries can get GLP-1s for obesity for $50 a month through a bridge program that started in July 2026 and now runs through 2027, though longer-term Medicare coverage remains uncertain.

That shift matters for a company built from day one to serve Medicaid and Medicare populations. Bryan Sivak, managing partner at Series A investor Evidenced, sees policy creating “a once-in-a-generation opportunity for companies that can deliver integrated, clinically rigorous care at scale.” Ilant Health, he contends, “is built for this moment.”

The competition is far better funded. Omada Health, now publicly traded, and Virta Health already sell to employers at scale. Pharmacy benefit managers, including Optum Rx, have launched their own GLP-1 management programs. With $22 million raised, Ilant’s strongest argument will be the outcomes data it can show employers and health plans.

What Comes After The Weight Comes Off

The first chapter of the GLP-1 era was about access: who could get the drugs and who would pay for them. The next chapter is about what happens after, and whether patients keep their health once the weight is gone. “Improving metabolic health requires more than just a prescription for weight loss,” observed Kara Mayes, Ilant’s chief medical officer.

Ilant has tied its revenue to proving that point. If it can, its model offers employers and public payers a template for treating obesity as the chronic disease it is, starting with the women who carry its heaviest burden. It is scaling its comprehensive cardiometabolic and obesity care model by investing in new clinical leadership, technology, and expanded member services.