Why One Should Count only Claims with which One Can Sympathize

Abstract

When one faces competing claims of varying strength on public resources for health, which claims count? This paper proposes the following answer. One should count, or aggregate, a person’s claim just in case one could sympathize with her desire to prioritize her own claim over the strongest competing claim. It argues that this principle yields appealing case judgments and has a plausible grounding in both sympathetic identification with each person, taken separately, and respect for the person for whom most is at stake. It also defends this principle against several heretofore unanswered objections, including those raised by Daniel Hausman in Valuing Health.