Two weeks and several political disasters ago, the House of Representatives passed the American Health Care Act of 2017, and soon lists of "pre-existing conditions" festooned news feeds. We all ticked off a few. But the lists, although acknowledged as incomplete, offered a highly inconsistent menu of maladies as broad as "cancer" yet as specific as "cystic fibrosis." I don't know whether the focus on the familiar reflects editorial choices to appeal to the masses, or ignorance of or deliberate avoidance of mentioning many of the lesser-known rare diseases. More than 30 million people in the US have rare diseases, many of them genetic and some of those treatable with approaches more complex than those used for more common conditions.
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