A city health department can spend $500,000 to either fund a vaccination campaign that prevents 1,000 cases of disease or expand dialysis services for 50 patients. Choosing one means losing the benefits of the other. What concept is this?

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BlackTom AI · Accepted Answer

The question describes a trade-off: the city health department can spend 500,000 on either a vaccination campaign that prevents 1,000 cases or expanding dialysis services for 50 patients. Choosing one option means forgoing the benefits of the other. This is a classic illustration of opportunity cost, which is the value of the next best alternative that is given up when a choice is made.

Because the question explicitly frames the decision as a choice between two alternatives with different benefits, the opportunity cost concept is the most appropriate framework for evaluating the trade-off. It captures the idea that resources are scarce and that selecting one course of action entails giving up the benefits that could have been obtained from the alternative.

Even so, the provided answer options are missing in the data you shared. Without the list of alternative choices, I cannot evaluate each option individually. In many exam items, other plausible distractors might include:
- Sunk cost: irrelevant to current decision because the cost has already been incurred and cannot be recovered.
- Marginal cost or marginal benefit: focuses on the additional cost or benefit of a one-unit change, which is related but not identical to the described whole-alternative trade-off.
- Budget constraint or resource constraint: describes the limitation conceptually but does not by itself name the foregone alternative.
- Externalities: concerns effects on third parties not captured in the direct costs and benefits of the two options.

In summary, given the situation where selecting one use of funds eliminates the other benefit, opportunity cost is the correct concept. If you can share the actual list of answer choices, I can walk through each one and explain precisely why opportunity cost is correct and why the others are not, using the same step-by-step reasoning you requested.

PUBHP6060_001_2025_3 - HEALTH SYSTEMS Health Econ Session 1 - Practice Problems

A city health department can spend $500,000 to either fund a vaccination campaign that prevents 1,000 cases of disease or expand dialysis services for 50 patients. Choosing one means losing the benefits of the other. What concept is this?

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PUBHP6060_001_2025_3 - HEALTH SYSTEMS Health Econ Session 1 - Practice Problems

A city health department can spend $500,000 to either fund a vaccination campaign that prevents 1,000 cases of disease or expand dialysis services for 50 patients. Choosing one means losing the benefits of the other. What concept is this?

View Explanation

Log in for full answers

Similar Questions

What distinguishes short-run opportunity cost from long-run opportunity cost?

Based on the production possibilities curve for books and pencils shown, what is the opportunity cost of producing a book?

The following PPF best represents _____________________; in this case, _____________________.

During the time when he was at the concert, Jeff could instead have cooked his Thanksgiving dinner or watched TV. He thinks that if he hadn’t gone to the concert, he would have cooked his dinner. His opportunity cost of attending the concert is the value of

According to the following graph, the opportunity cost of moving from point C to point B is ___.

What is the most likely outcome of an economic policy based on the "Broken Window Fallacy"?

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More Practical Tools for Students Powered by AI Study Helper

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