Public Policy and Health Term Paper

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Public Policy and Health

Increasing premium costs for managed care have considerable influence for America's workforce. The rise in the financial burden on the workforce to contribute to their health care plans to assist offset increasing premiums paid by business owners cause the workforce to drop the coverage. The number of the uninsured remains the most glaring evidence of the U.S. healthcare crisis. Regardless of opinion polls regularly depicting that a majority of Americans prefer a health care system that guarantees universal coverage, insurance firms profiting from the current system have stifled any true reform. This looks at the specific financial issues like transport, health insurance, income, globalization, and rising health care cost that currently affect the U.S. health care system.

Transportation

Many rural areas in the U.S. lack adequate public transportation systems. This has left people to find their own transportation; in the extreme situations, this implies walking to the nearest health care center. With the fluctuations in extreme temperature in winter and summer, transportation even by vehicle becomes torturous. In some cases, the roads lack pavements making transport arrangements more difficult (Jonas, Goldsteen & Goldsteen, 2007).

Regions lacking specialty providers must visit urban areas sometimes taking up to two hours drive. Despite having a state telemedicine framework spanning throughout all the states, this system is not used in the rural zones of the states. The system provides transportation although appointment must be made in advance for a ride to an impossible appointment. Researchers have shown that even with appointments, lack of transportation inconveniences patients or even attending nurses seeking to get to patients in time. This causes frustration on both the patient and the medical faculty taking care of the patient. In some occasions, patients have opted to arrange their own transportation, which results in their cancelling or missing their appointments (Drake, 2010).

Health Insurance and Income

Another significant contributing factor is the lack of finances and health insurance. Those who are uninsured tend to be minority, low-income families without insurance for varied reasons. Sometimes, their place of work does not offer coverage or cannot afford premiums. Policy makers have varying arguments about the lack of health insurance among Americans. Lack of health care insurance is the key barrier to accessing health care for minorities. The second significant factor is poverty or low income (Lavastida, 2010). These risks have heightened the proportion to resource and opportunity availability. Therefore, environmental and socioeconomic resources have translated into an increased relative risk.

Researchers have generated a common theme showing the relative proportion in the level of education and the percentage of having insurance coverage. A high educational level is proportional to a high-income level, thus the ability to afford health insurance coverage. Even with a high-income level among minorities in the ghetto areas, the federal service providers of health care in the community remain low. It has been evidenced that schools in the ghetto lag behind than urban schools. Worse still, rural/ghetto schools are suffering disproportionately from dilapidated buildings, lack of funding and less qualified teachers. This has only served to further the dilemma of underachievement in such schools. This dilemma is complicated by the strategies designed by federal and state policy makers seeking to enhance the academic performance of ghetto schools often restricted to school-based solutions.

Health Provider Shortage

Any crisis affecting the country's health care system usually affects the ghetto system more significantly. For decades, it has been predicted that there will be a health care shortage: it will worsen because the ghetto populations exploded and health care practitioners decided to practice in urban settings. All over the U.S., numerous areas lack pharmaceutical services and are not immune for this classification (Drake, 2010). In fact, the number of primary caregivers has been on the decline in the previous years. However, reports indicate that the overall number of physicians has not increased but still keeps up with the expanding ghetto and peri-urban populations.

Rising Health Care Costs

Rising expenditure associated with health care have become a common concern and knowledge for the public, employers, and governments purchasing health care coverage for their employees. Four key actors play a role in health care expenses: employers, purchasers, individuals, and the governments supplying the funds. Insurers receive money from buyers and then they reimburse providers. The government is seen as a purchaser or insurer in the Medicaid of Medicare programs. The term 'payer' is used to signify both insurers and purchasers. Providers include hospitals, physicians, home care agencies, nursing homes and pharmacies. The pharmaceutical, suppliers and medical manufacturers and distributors might be opposed to one another.

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If physicians receive capitation payment from insurers, primary care specialists and physicians might disagree over how much of the capitation should be given to each group (Jonas, Goldsteen & Goldsteen, 2007).

The rising and high health care expenses have presented impediments but are not a gross problem. The healthcare sector provides employment, ameliorates health outcomes, and remits services that populations seek. Therefore, increased health care expenditures can be a positive component in lieu of the negative one. Moreover, if the national economy is expanding, increase in health expenditure might not minimize spending on sectors outside the healthcare industry. Expanding costs have increased the number of uninsured people through three elements:

I. Employers have stopped providing insurance to their employees

II. Employers have declined employer-based health insurance because they cannot afford the employee percentage of the premium

III. People have been eliminated from Medicaid as state governments responded to increasing costs with eligibility reductions (Lavastida, 2010).

For most of the uninsured, higher costs have made physicians' visits, prescription drugs and preventive services less affordable, especially for elderly patients, indigent persons and those in poor health.

International Developments

Global developments have considerably altered the implications of innovations in health care. WE-based competitors, making it harder for them to pay the share of the increasing medical costs, have seriously challenged U.S. industries. Main capital net outflows from the U.S. happened as a serious balance of developing trade problems. The trend of making a direct investment of business capital overseas has led to transnational corporations. Additionally, a major growth in the global arms race has generated strains for the Americans and the utility of public resources for health care. Consequently, the dynamics behind these evolutions have been combined with events happening in the Soviet Bloc triggering a total reordering of international relations (Farley & Mendel, 2009).

Two developments that are more global added major challenges to the healthcare system that the traditional health care system was deficiently prepared to address. First, Acquired Immune Deficiency Disease (AIDS) as a new epidemic swept across the U.S., Western Europe, Africa, and other global regions. The HIV virus producing this epidemic reoriented the way medical researchers viewed the process of health disease and coerced a re-examination of interventions focusing on the cure rather than prevention. Secondly, the increased international drug trafficking generated an increasing problem of drug addiction within the internal cities of the U.S. And then to other parts of the world (Lawrence & Tabbner, 2008).

Globalization

Globalization of the U.S. health care system has a lot of problems and challenges. The integration of industry mergers has mostly been done by companies and powerful business-oriented individuals seeking to achieve optimal health care for all Americans. In future, the country will experience increased populations with declining access to health care. The evolution of the private healthcare market accompanied by payment restrictions under Medicare and Medicaid has eroded the payment cross-subsidies for providers who have historically financed care-covered individuals (Farley & Mendel, 2009).

Inefficient Business Management

The financial ground of improving health care depends on improved businesses on the part of healthcare administrators and providers. The absence of both healthcare and business savvy impedes all Americans from receiving enough health care. Private health care has at least two basic benefits that guarantee universal access to health care and ensures costs are maintained (Lawrence & Tabbner, 2008). On the other hand, government-funded health care has been inefficient. Nevertheless, there is a need to strike a financial balance to support sufficient health care for all U.S. citizens. This goal can be advanced by financial management recommendations.

The need for better business skills among healthcare administrators and providers, particularly during globalization, escalating costs, and inadequate management is essential. From a globalization perspective, majority of hospitals in the U.S. are owned by both Americans and foreign corporations. Additionally, currency fluctuations coupled with other financial problems further underscore the massive need for increased management savvy.

Large Population of Uninsured Citizens

Many U.S. citizens have enrolled in a Health Maintenance Organization (HMO). Regardless of the issues involved with HMO, this new development has been driven and enhanced by the issues related to the U.S. healthcare system. Currently, it is not easy to acquire reasonable prices for health insurance and health care and has forced many people feel compelled to enroll in a HMO. Recent studies point that the number of uninsured individuals is on the rise. Currently, approximately 20% of the U.S.….....

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