At any given time in the United States, large numbers of people are afflicted with common diseases or dis-orders while substantially smaller numbers of people suffer and die from conditions that are less common. Some - of these rare disorders are expensive to treat or require large investments in research to develop effective interventions. When health budgets are insufficient to provide care for all, allocating resources to treat a person with a rare and expensive disorder entails that we cannot treat at least one person with a more common, less expensive disorder. Since any allocation scheme will entail such tradeoffs, how should prudent policy-makers, concerned about justice and fairness, allocate their community's health resources?
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