How Should We Model Rare Disease Allocation Decisions?

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 trade-offs, how should pr...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: John London, Alex (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Published: 2012
In: The Hastings Center report
Year: 2012, Volume: 42, Issue: 1, Pages: 3
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
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Summary: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 trade-offs, how should prudent policy-makers, concerned about justice and fairness, allocate their community's health resources? In their article in this issue of the Hastings Center Report, Emily Largent and Steven Pearson frame this problem as a conflict between the “rule of rescue” and utilitarian allocation schemes that try to maximize the benefits produced by a given budget. In his article, Norman Daniels discusses the related problem of the “identified victim bias.” I doubt that the problem of crafting an equitable health policy regarding orphan diseases maps onto either of these factors in a way that sheds light on the key moral issues.
ISSN:1552-146X
Contains:Enthalten in: Hastings Center, The Hastings Center report
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1002/hast.3