The United States government has endlessly invested in ensuring that the health standards in the nation are optimum. In the process, the government has incurred significant expenditure and has been working out strategies to minimize the costs incurred. However, the federal government is acquiring increasing revenue from the investment in the health sector. The government, trying to reduce the expenses incurred has considered privatizing some departments in the area of health. The paper attempts to analyze the role and trend of US government in the provision of health care to the households while upholding the requirements of Patient Protection and Affordable Act that was enacted into law in 2010 by the President H.E Barrack Obama.
Article 6402 of the Patient Protection and Provision Act stipulates the role of enhancing Medicare and Medicaid programs. The plans have been executed to ensure that the integrity and transparency of the health department are upheld. The system gives the authority to the Secretary of the Health Department access to the database of the sector to identify fraud and abuse cases. The programs also help to Secretary detect and solve instances of patients overpaying for health provision. The Acts positions the government strategically to monitor the sector’s operations and ensure growth and prosperity in the area of health for the benefit of the people.
There is growing pressure on the US government to shift a part of the Health Care Department to the private companies, insurance companies, and private health care facilities. However, critics have argued that shifting the health care to the private sector would cause the service provision standards to deteriorate considerably (Oh et al., 2011). The deterioration can be attributed to the fact that the private companies and medical care facilities are not endowed with adequate resources to cater for the needs of all patients in the United States. The fact that private firms do not have sufficient resources leaves the government dominant in the sector. The government has resources that can be invested in technology and research leaving the industry endowed with innovativeness and creativity in disease eradication and health provision. The Medicare program has proved to be efficient in the US has seen the life expectancy of the aging people increase due to the specialized relatively cheap services offered (Common Dreams, 2016). The services provided by Medicare, which is government initiated, are by far cheap compared to the private health care system which is very expensive especially for surgeries.
However, some shortcomings are exhibited when the health sector is entirely left in the government wing. For example, the government aims at enhancing the welfare and health of the individuals at an affordable cost. The objective handicaps the revenue raising agenda of the government in that the state is not able to raise the revenues as expected because the cost of service provision is reduced to favor the citizens. Another implication of full state control of health department is that there are cases of corruption and fraudulent activities. The reason for the cases is the fact that employees do not take personal responsibility for state affairs, and there are inadequate checks in the departments.
On the other hand, shifting the unit into the private sector can be profitable in that the private enterprises are efficient in minimizing cost and maximizing output and net profit. Hence, if the state wants to create revenue from the sector, the private industry is the best deal. Also, the private sector services are standardized such that the final output is good but comes at a high cost. The main argument against privatization of health sector is the costs involved. The industry aims at making profits which make costs involved so expensive such that they do not favor the US citizens, who are the government’s top priority. The private sector provides services based on class and financial endowment of an individual and not health care as needed of the American people.
References
Oh, J., Lee, J., Choi, Y., Park, H., Do, Y., & Eun, S. (2011). Struggle against Privatization: A Case History in the Use of Comparative Performance Evaluation of Public Hospitals. International Journal Of Health Services, 41(2), 371-388. http://dx.doi.org/10.2190/hs.41.2.j
Common Dreams,. (2016). Ways Privatization Has Failed America. Retrieved 4 March 2016, from http://www.commondreams.org/views/2013/08/05/8-ways-privatization-has-failed- america
