Essays on Health Policy

Current Health Policy Debate regarding the Affordable Care Act

Introduction The health policy debate regarding ObamaCare focuses on the interest of average U.S citizens. The Affordable Care Act offers protection and benefits to all United States’ citizens regardless of their economic status and social lifestyle. The ACA seeks to reduce the insurance premiums to ensure the majority of average American families are covered. The law seeks to ensure 30 million of 44 million Americans without insurance get access to health coverage (ObamaCare, 2015). The government through the health insurance marketplaces, employers and Medicaid would ensure more Americans obtains health insurance coverage. The health law focuses on low-income Americans ...

Introduction

Health policy can be defined as a plan or decision combined with actions to achieve specific healthcare goals by implementing key strategies within the society (WHO, 2016). As per the World Health Organization (WHO), an explicit health policy is known to be associated with several success factors such as development of a vision for the future and establishment of key targets for the short and long-term. Health policies enable organizations, institutes, societies, and groups to define outline, propose new goals, and inculcate different roles across various healthcare sectors (Záliš, et al. 2016). Healthcare policies are known to unite ...

Career development plan

I started building up my career four years ago with a BA in Health and Social Care and later proceeded to further pursue an MA in public health. I gained a great interest to study public health after completing my coursework in people, places and inequalities and Health Promotion. The coursework is concerned with the general well-being of the community and public health. During my career development, I have worked with different types and groups of people from different departments and agencies. I have also worked as a clinic support worker set up in an NHS setting. I intend ...

Health policy entails the goals and decisions made so as to achieve the various health care objectives in the society. It just stipulates the future vision and establishes the expected roles of the people concerned in the health matters in the society. Health care in America has come a long way. In the recent past, health care was quite an expensive entity, but leaders have put in place measures to ensure that proper health services are accessible to every citizen. For instance, there is the Affordable care Act or else known as Obamacare, which was enacted into law by ...

Introduction: Australia is made of 6 state and 2 territories. It has one the best performing healthcare system in the world. At present, Australian healthcare system is a mix of public and private health care providers. The public health care system is funded by the government. Australia has a three tier government: the federal or commonwealth government, the state/territory government, and the local government. The health care system in Australia is complex. Given below is an overview of the system and its functions. 1. The structure of Australian Health Care System: The system of health care delivery is fragmented ...

Essay

Introduction Health care policy deserves thorough examination in terms of its implementation and practice discourse. In order to find the ways to avoid disastrous health outcomes for all the people, one should speak of proper delivery of health services, which is possible in case the system approach is applied. If to consider leadership from the point of view of the system approach, leadership in healthcare should be analyzed in its connection with the providing of the best possible nursing practices, continuous improvement of applied techniques and policies, which should serve to ensure the safety of patients’ health. It also ...

Introduction, Background, and Purpose

Power is more relational than absolute. Power relates to the degree of control that one exercises over outcomes, resources, actions, and process. The power can either be formal or informal. The formal power is the leeway that one is given through the rules of the organization in which he works to influence the course of certain elements in that organization. This is legitimate power afforded to a worker to enable them to deliver their mandate. Illegitimate power is different from the legitimate authority because unlike in the former case, the illegitimate power lacks authority. Nonetheless, it can be significantly ...

One of the branches of health that has been gaining attention in the recent years is health policy. It is defined as a science which deals with the decision-making, planning, and implementing of specific interventions and strategies that aim to achieve a certain healthcare goal within a community (World Health Organization, 2016). In line with the different goals of health policy is the term health policy advocacy. Health policy advocacies act as the support and the act of persuading or pleading to another person. As a whole, health policy advocacy generally refers to the act of channeling the issues ...

In most cases, health issues are usually too complex for individual advocacy. In such cases, healthcare practitioners see it effective to establish a coalition to help in advancing policies and practices. This paper discusses the idea behind coalition building from a nursing perspective. It further differentiates effective strategies of coalition building that serve as vital in shaping health policy in nursing practice environments. Contemporary nurses practice in a period of major health care reforms. Such situations require nurses with the ability to influence both political and professional entities. These efforts would call for effective coalition-building strategies. Coalitions are temporary ...

Introduction

The changes occurring in the health sector has been one of the main concerns of health professionals and researchers. Due to the changes of the demographics and health status of patients along with the current technological advances, it has been assumed that the old strategies used could no longer suffice for the current global health concerns. Thus, it is necessary to consider revisions and improvements when it comes to the advancements of medical technology along with the other issues related to the implementation of certain interventions and promotion of the fundamental goals of health development (United Nations Development Program, ...

U.S. Senator, Missouri

2011-Present

Personal Background Martial Status: Married to Abigail Blunt Education: B.A. History, Southwest Baptist University (1970) https://ballotpedia.org/Roy_Blunt M.A. History, Missouri State University (1972) https://ballotpedia.org/Roy_Blunt Previous Experience: Clerk of Greene County, Missouri (1972-1984) https://ballotpedia.org/Roy_Blunt Missouri Secretary of State (1985-1992) https://ballotpedia.org/Roy_Blunt President, Southwest Baptist University (1993-1996) https://ballotpedia.org/Roy_Blunt U.S. House of Representatives (1996-2010) https://ballotpedia.org/Roy_Blunt

Committee Assignments:

Appropriations Committee 2011- present https://ballotpedia.org/Roy_Blunt Commerce. Science, and Transportation Committee 2011-2016 https://ballotpedia.org/Roy_Blunt Rules and Administration Committee 2011- present (became chairman 2015) https://ballotpedia.org/Roy_Blunt Joint Committee on the Library 2015- present https://ballotpedia.org/Roy_Blunt Joint Committee on Printing 2015-present (vice chairman) https://ballotpedia.org/Roy_Blunt Committee on Armed Services 2013-2014 https://ballotpedia.org/Roy_Blunt

Sponsored Legislation

2016 https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/browse?sponsor=400034#bill_type[] ...

Dear Senator/Representative (Legislator’s Name):

As a leader of a non-profit health care organization, I would like to respectfully express my views and observations about the current health care status in our country. In particular, medication administration procedures. I would also like to call your attention about my goal in promoting a safer health care system for the benefits of all patients across our country. I agree that the reform in our health care system may have been long overdue. It feels great to know that our government is exerting its efforts to improve the overall system through health care reform laws. However, I ...

Healthcare policy analysis, one of the scopes of healthcare policy, is mainly involved in the development and evaluation of the different interventions that have been implemented to help in the improvement of the healthcare delivery system. Policy analysis in the healthcare system is mainly associated with the regulation and finance of different healthcare services. Other activities involved in the process of healthcare policy analysis include developing and analyzing data to serve as support for different policies, assessing new initiatives in the field of healthcare by utilizing different techniques which include cost-benefit analysis, evaluation of programs, analysis of implementations, and ...

Introduction

In the current era of healthcare management, hospitals need to consider a wide range of factors to make sure that its quality improvement programs are in compliance with national and state health policies. This paper will critically evaluate how national and state health policies impact implementing quality improvement programs at the macro-meso-and micro-system levels. The paper will also discuss what actions an individual nurse/nurse executive can do within an organization to promote such quality improvement initiatives.

Quality Improvement

It is identified that health policies designed by national and state governments can significantly influence the implementation of quality improvement programs at the ...

The World Health Organization [WHO] defined healthcare policy as the branch of healthcare which specializes on the decision-making, planning, and implementing of different policies and laws that are deemed necessary to be able to achieve goals set in a particular society. It has been said that healthcare policy allows prioritization of the different goals of different communities which can bridge the gap especially when establishing consensus and informing the people (WHO, 2016). On the other hand, healthcare policy models and frameworks are different outlines or structures used by health professionals in the brainstorming, implementation, and evaluation of various health ...

Health financing in healthcare economics has been essential in analyzing how individuals generate and allocate financial resources in health systems. Part of this discipline is the analysis of sociopolitical and economic factors in driving consumer spending. On one hand, socioeconomic factors study how economic behavior interacts with social processes to impact healthcare. Contrarily, sociopolitical factors examine how individuals combine social and political factors to impact health through policy. This assignment compares socioeconomic and sociopolitical factors given their impact on healthcare finance and patient care from a nursing perspective. The sociopolitical factors refer to the extent to which individuals let ...

Political Action Committees (PACs) and Special Interest Groups (SIGs) are important organizations associated with the politics in the United States. In fact, PACs have been recognized as the second best advocacy group capable of funding political campaigns. Similarly, SIGs are also organizations which contribute money to the campaigns of political parties to be able to encourage politicians to support their causes. Aside from this, SIGs also engage in different public displays which include protests in the World Trade Organization and even in meetings involving the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. The main objectives of such protests are to ...

Healthcare Economics is a subset of economics that focuses on how societies produce, distribute, and consume health and healthcare. Since its inception, healthcare economics has been concerned with the efficiency and effectiveness at which individuals and governments value health and health-related products. The discipline acknowledges the numerous stakeholders in healthcare, among them patients, their families, physicians, nursing staff, governments, and educational institutions (Kotsopoulos and Connolly, 2014). This discussion compares macro-and microeconomic healthcare conditions concerning their impacts on patients from a nursing perspective. On one hand, microeconomics emphasizes on the individual and communal economic activities. Conditions under this branch fall ...

One of the branches of science that is currently gaining popularity is health policy. Health policy is defined as the study which deals with the different actions and plans done by the local, state, and even the national government. Additionally, it includes the different efforts in terms of legislative and regulatory aspects, especially with organizing, financing, and delivering of health care services. Some of the health care concerns associated with health policy include trainings and seminars of health professionals, ensuring the safety of the different medicines, drugs, and medical services, implementing different public health programs, and regulating of the ...

Health care delivery systems are mechanisms for offering health-related services aimed at meeting the health demands of individuals. Contrarily, health organizations are entities developed to meet the healthcare needs of individuals. This assignment compares and contrasts health care organizations and delivery systems using the Kaiser Permanente (KP) example. The American healthcare delivery system constitutes of several models pegged on numerous structures and institutions. One of these models is the KP integrated healthcare delivery system. This system consists of three subdivisions including an insurance health risk plan, hospital networks, and physicians. The KP system looks into the provision of quality, ...

Summary

A number of national policies are discussed and aired daily on mass media platforms and newspapers. The three national policy issues that I found interesting are sourced from these three newspaper articles:- The Associated Press. (2016, May 14). Reyes banned through May under MLB domestic violence policy. USA Today. Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2016/05/13/reyes-banned-thru-may-31-under-mlb-domestic-violence-policy/84344426/ Reuters. (2016, June 11). California Governor Signs Bill Letting Undocumented Immigrants Buy Insurance. New York Times [New York]. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2016/06/11/us/11reuters-california-insurance.html?_r=0 Shear, M. D., & Lichtblau, E. (2016, January 4). Obama to Expand Gun Background Checks and Tighten Enforcement. New York Times [New York]. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/05/us/politics/obama-says-he-will-act-on-gun-control-in-coming-days.html

Gun Violence Research Act

This ...

Introduction

Transparency is critical in conducting clinical research. Transparency is a fundamental value regardless of the department or organization. The issue concerns the need to ensure transparency is maintained when conducting clinical research. The policy that was recently initiated calls for the restoration of transparency that will benefit health care providers, parents and health systems. The lack of transparency in clinical findings puts the patients’ lives at risk (Health Affairs 21). This will mean that inventories will not be accredited better standards due to lack of accountability. It is paramount that such a policy in health care be implemented to ...

Introduction

An important indicator of the level of development of nations around the world is that of the existing policies towards healthcare, health promotion, wellness and prevention of outbreak of diseases . The preparedness of the government as well as historical records of success or failure to contain diseases and healthcare conditions help in providing an outlook on the overall healthcare condition in a nation . Sometimes it does happen that a major disease outbreak transforms into a national emergency which seeks to test present the true picture, especially when the healthcare policies and strategies are analyzed against that of a developed ...

Reflective Journal Template – Topic Reflection

Health is one of the most central parts of our lives, and it is for this reason that healthcare facilities developments have been put at the forefront worldwide to ensure that individuals get the best medical attention at an affordable fee. Additionally, how powerful a country is depends on the health status of its residents, that is, more sickness and increased deaths is equivalent to a weak country (Pugh, 2015). Provision of health services in the United States began early in the late 1920s where the state offered funds to provide medical facilities for the sick even though there ...

Glaucoma refers to a group of diseases, which are responsible for stealing the sight from those individuals that suffer from it. It is not just a first world problem, but rather a problem that has spread out all over the worlds to developing countries as well. Many studies and measures have been taken to try to help create a workable intervention for patients suffering from this sort of problem. In as much as there is very little known to professionals about the what can be done primarily to prevent glaucoma, there are some very effective medical techniques that doctors ...

Executive Summary

An arrhythmia refers to the irregular rhythm of the heartbeat that may cause the heart to either beat too fast or slow. Though the arrhythmia may be harmless, it is life-threatening to people suffering from heart diseases if not detected earlier. Management, monitoring, detection, and diagnosis of the correct arrhythmia is difficult, yet it is should be done 24 hours to reduce morbidity and mortality cases related to arrhythmia. It is for this reasons that iRhythm developed ZIO XT Patch, a wearable that is used to monitor and record patient heartbeats. This helps to detect arrhythmia and the development ...

Health policy analysis

Introduction Unquestionably, health is an essential part of life without which human existence is under threat of extinction. According to McLaughlin & McLaughlin (2007), maintenance of mental wellness is fundamental to achieving mental sobriety among the members of the society. Unfortunately, the number of people with mental disorders is growing almost in every society (Walt et al., 2008). In America, adult population with mental illness is over 60 million, the majority of who are Africans Americans. The main barrier to access proper mental health care is the soaring costs and people’s perceptions of mental health (America’s Health, 2016). ...

(Tutor/Professor) (City, State)

Service Management

Executive Summary Service organizations face numerous challenges in an attempt to please their users. Discontentment and un-satisfaction among service users may lead to the organization in question being unpopular. Organization management differs from one organization to the other. Importantly, an organization can learn from another on how to address certain challenges. This report focuses on two service organizations in a similar industry (American Health Organization and American Red Cross), in relation to CRP. Both organizations offer CRP trainings, in addition to helping victims. The approaches the two employ differ. This report seeks to analyze such differences ...

Introduction

The existing legal frameworks require a work safety and health plan for any construction project in the country. Compliance with the OSHA regulations is a fundamental aspect of the success of a construction project and site. These provisions allow the management of the site to identify, prevent, and mitigate any physical and health risk that can harm workers, and take necessary steps when accidents occur (Toole, p.204). A written safety plan is a blueprint for ensuring the safety of the workers. In this essay, the article develops a safety plan that can be implemented by a safety manager at ...

Introduction

The professional organizations and associations in nursing plays a crucial role towards promoting advanced and better health care. They’re charged with the responsibility to generate the energy, organization of ideas, and pre-emptive work required to sustain a healthy profession that promotes the needs and preferences of the nursing profession, nurses, and the patients. The associations improves the trust of society concerning health care matters. The paper will shed light on defining the scope of professional organizations in nursing, examine the scope, discuss the trending issues, and offer an analysis of the future of the nursing profession.

Define the scope of the issue

The role ...

Currently, in all American states, sexually active teens can access contraceptives even if they do not talk about sex and pregnancy with their parents and even without the consent of the parents. Contraceptives are the devices or drugs that are used to prevent a person from getting a pregnancy that is not planned for. Some contraceptives like condoms even avoid the transmission of STDs and HIV. However, some federal and state lawmakers wish to take away the ability by teenagers to protect themselves and other involved parties like their parents, partners and babies (Eichner & Maxine 87). They would like ...

The interview is about critical incident crisis management among children. A critical incident refers to an event or series of events that threatened human welfare and potentially results in loss of human life or life-threatening injury or illness. Accordingly, critical incident crisis management among children refers to measures and protocols aimed at enabling the children that are impacted by critical incidents to cope up with the crisis with the objective of restoring them to their initial functioning (European Interagency Security Forum (EISF), 2014). This paper reflects on the issues brought out in the interview and the connection thereof with ...

Abstract

The World Health Organization (WHO), 2010 noted that recent research has identified several psychosocial and biologic risk factors for postpartum depression (PPD). Early recognition is one of the major challenges with this overwhelming mood disorder. The main focus of this project is to provide easy access to educational materials to aid in the screening, assessment, and treatment of women who experience depression during pregnancy or the postpartum period. PPD was amended by The American Psychiatric Association, in the 2013 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV), to peripartum depression and specifies that the onset of mood disturbance can ...

Abstract

There is currently a shift to the social determinants of health (SDH) framework in public health and the larger health system. The framework demonstrates that larger social systems impact individual socioeconomic position which predicts material, biological, and psychosocial circumstances. The resulting disparity directly impacts health. Disparity can be noted in diabetes and heart disease. Healthy People 2010 and 2020 have raised the issue of disparity at a national level which stimulated research and program and policy development to eliminate SDH. Advanced practice nurses have important roles to play as leaders, researchers, advocates, and care providers in the achievement of ...

Essay

Abstract Researchers have long been exploring the various factors that affect the health condition of individuals and/or groups. They have reported the key factors that seemingly determine health outcomes for vulnerable populations, namely, socioeconomic status (e.g. income, education, and occupation), cultural practices, and social services (e.g. housing, medical care). These so-called social determinants of health largely contribute to health disparities. Health policy has also been reported to significantly influence the health condition of vulnerable population. For instance, in the U.S., health policy is more focused on 'cure' than 'prevention', which, in consequence, channels bulk of the resources toward clinical ...

Public or community health can be defined as an array of measures, both of private and public nature, that are targeted at preventing diseases, fostering health and trying to prolong life in general as well as make it more healthy. The goals of these activities are creating healthy conditions of life for the entire society which can positively reflect on personal health of each given person, focusing on overall trends in the health stance of the entire population of a given state or globally (Public Health). This leads us to the idea how public health differs from private health. ...

Introduction

Approximately 2.5 million individuals in the United States contract pneumonia annually, and 55,000 of those individuals die as a result. In fact, pneumonia was the eighth prominent cause of morbidity and is the number one communicable disease in the United States. Pneumonia is the leading deadly hospital-contracted disease and contributes to a sizable amount of deaths in unindustrialized countries as well. It is a grave illness that can impact individuals in all age groups, but it is especially serious in adolescents, the elderly population, and in people with fundamental medical issues such as ischemia, low blood sugar, and ...

People Who Cannot Afford a Visit to the ED

The Canada health care system is funded by the public. This is contrary to other health care systems that are government-funded. According to the Canada Health Act (1984) it is the right of each insured individual to receive insured services.

According to the Canadian health care plan, the average health care cost per an emergency room visit is estimated at over $1000 (Eaves, 2010). The Canadian emergency department charges a lot of money to the persons admitted. The insured individuals are lucky since the insurance can take care of these charges. However, the people without an insurance cover have to ...