There is an increasingly attractive argument in health care: obesity drives diabetes, cardiovascular disease, sleep apnea, joint disease and a long list of other expensive conditions. GLP-1 medications can materially reduce obesity. Therefore, broader use of GLP-1s could radically reduce health care spending.

There is enough truth in that argument to make it compelling.

But it does not resolve the underlying question of affordability.

GLP-1s may prove to be one of the most important population health interventions of our time. For decades,