Wegovy & Zepbound's next lap harder than acceptance

THIS TIME LAST year, people were still bickering about whether Novo Nordisk's Wegovy and Eli Lilly & Co.'s Zepbound represented a shortcut to losing weight or a medical breakthrough.

- LISA JARVIS

But with reams of data on the drugs' health benefits beyond reducing obesity—including mitigating heart disease, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, and sleep apnea—most seem to have finally accepted their potentially immense societal value.

Now comes the hard part. These highly effective drugs—GLP-1s—are changing the way obesity is viewed and treated. The changes are coming so fast and could benefit so many that they've created new questions and ethical quandaries for medical professionals, including who should get them.

The theoretical market for Wegovy and Zepbound is massive: The Food and Drug Administration approved them for anyone with a body-mass index of 30 or more—or 27 or higher for individuals with a weight-related condition like high blood pressure or sleep apnea. Some 57 million working-age Americans with private insurance match those criteria, as do nearly 14 million retirement-age Americans. The expectation is that once started, the drugs will need to be taken for life to maintain the results.