Abstract

Two disputes are waged simultaneously in the pages of this issue of the Report, but it might be easy to lose track of the second. The obvious dispute is about resource allocation in health policy: the question is whether limited health care resources should be spent on identified victims—people whose struggles with disease have made the news—when the same investment might provide more help if spent on a larger number of unknown, merely “statistical” people. The second, less easily noticed dispute is about the challenge of crafting public policy when the arguments pro and con are not decisive.