Objectives:  To test whether social preferences for allocating health resources are affected by the framing of questions Methods:  162 students from the University of Southern California were asked four questions.  Each question asked participants to select one of two possible treatments with each treatment resulting in a different distribution of outcomes for the treated population.  After treatment, patients could have one of three outcomes: “Good Health”, “Poor Health”, or “Death.”  The first medication listed always had 19 fewer people in “Good Health”, 23 more people in “Poor Health” and 4 fewer people in the “Death” state relative to the second medication listed.  The only aspect that varied between questions was the number of patients unaffected by treatment choice.      Two questions had a “standard frame”, indicative of commonly asked questions in the equity literature.  The remaining two questions had a “sure thing” frame, in which common outcomes between the two treatments were made apparent.  Frame order was randomized for each of the participants.     A key qualitative principle behind QALY maximization is that those individuals unaffected by a policy choice should not influence the policy choice.  Violations of this principle were measured for each of the frames.   Results:  The proportion of violations of QALY maximization (indicated by switched preference) in the “standard” frame was 0.31 (56/183); while in the “sure-thing” frame, the proportion was 0.08 (15/183).  The difference between groups was statistically significant (p <0.001) Conclusions:   The most common way of asking for preferences for equality tends to foster aversion to inequality, which does not support QALY maximization. In contrast, a frame that separates common outcomes between choices may occasion preferences that maximize QALYs.   These results have implications for measurement techniques such as the person tradeoff which assumes framing has no effect on preferences for health allocation.