Clinicians can be patient advocates, resource stewards, and promote good financial choices about care.

Life extension requires careful consideration of resource scarcity, justice, and what, if anything, is intrinsic to the experiences we define as human.

Advances in CEA methodology might integrate equity at the cost of transparency.

The AMA Code of Medical Ethics offers guidance on stewardship and professionalism.

Closed formularies can be justified when they enable spending on other socially valuable aims, but they can single out poor patients.

Dichotomies, such as reconstructive vs aesthetic surgery and medical vs cosmetic dermatology, can distort meanings of surgical procedures. This can compromise the value of procedures themselves and practices for their reimbursement.

When combined with motivation to provide good care, uncertainty about how to do so for patients who are excluded from key public insurance provisions can give rise to workarounds. Their practical and ethical complexities should be recognized when considering how to best serve immigrant communities.

Although undocumented immigrants contribute to the pool of available organs and to the US tax base, they are not eligible for organ transplantation in most US states.

The AMA’s Council on Rural Health (1945-1975) collaborated with domestic health care organizations in the mid-20th century to improve access to health care in rural areas.

Standards for posttransplant graft/survival rates do not reward transplant centers for performing riskier transplants to increase population benefit.