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New weight loss drugs powerful enough to help obese patients lose up to a fifth of their total body weight might become the highest-selling medication class ever. The price tag for these treatments? About $1,000 a month.

Our neighbors are concerned about facing rising costs of health care, and rightfully so.For insulin, the list price has risen over 140% in the last 10 years, forcing patients to ration – tragically, even abandon – their prescriptions. (John Anderson, 7/28)

I was in seat 20C on a flight home this March, when I felt my throat closing. Minutes earlier, hives had appeared on my face and chest. As a physician, I knew exactly what these symptoms meant: anaphylaxis, a severe allergic reaction so precipitously fatal that putting a breathing tube down someone’s throat is sometimes necessary. What I needed was an epinephrine autoinjector, also known as an EpiPen, but neither the airplane emergency medical kit nor any other passenger had one. (Lindsey Ulin, 8/1)

Our family doctor, a leading figure in the community, inspired me to follow in his footsteps and help people in need. Years later, while working as a physician in Massachusetts, I was appalled to observe how many medicines failed to benefit society’s most vulnerable, in particular people of color. I soon shifted my career into drug development, because I felt I could improve health care on a bigger scale through innovation. (Ted W. Love, 7/31)

Two of the biggest stories in medicine this year — the arrival of the first disease-modifying treatments in Alzheimer’s and the stunning transformations made possible by new weight-loss drugs — have something in common: Eli Lilly & Co. (Lisa Jarvis, 7/31)