NIH to Offer Free Health Care for People With Very Rare Diseases

The Feds are now offering help to patients with diseases so rare and mysterious that they've gone undiagnosed for years.

The National Institutes of Health is seeking those patients - and those who qualify could get some free care at the government's top research hospital as scientists study why they're sick.

"These patients are to a certain extent abandoned by the medical profession because a brick wall has been hit," said Dr. William Gahl, who helped develop the NIH's new Undiagnosed Diseases Program. "We're trying to remove some of that."