Introduction
Healthcare provision is an essential service required by humanity for survival. Most democratic nations use healthcare as a campaign tool to ascend to power. Therefore, healthcare policy is an essential tool that streamlines the sector to ensure that patients, healthcare organizations, and governmental regulatory entities relate well to the provision of better medical services (Maioni, 2020). Further, when there are policies and rules guiding healthcare practices, the provision of the services is made efficient, and errors will be significantly reduced. The healthcare process, therefore, needs adequate policies for the effective delivery of services. This paper explains the history and the process of healthcare policy formulation in the United States of America.
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as holistic well-being in the physical, social, and mental well-being. The rules and regulations are formulated to ensure the patient’s state of well-being is not jeopardized. It is prudent to note that economic status plays a significant role in providing healthcare services. A country with a higher Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita is likely to have an effective healthcare policy. The formulation of the policies is further based on the health determinants in a country. Healthy people 2020 explains biology, behaviors, social environment, physical environment, and private-public entity relationships (Longest 2016). For Example, if insurance companies charge huge amounts of premiums, the government must enact laws to ensure that the insurance companies do not exploit the people.
Economic Impacts on the Formulation of Healthcare Policy
The economic situation of a country cascaded with political inclination is the prerequisite for formulating healthcare policies. The process of healthcare policy formulation in the federal government revolves around the three primary arms of the government, which generate rules, implementation strategies, regulations, and laws to govern the healthcare provisions in the country. The stage heuristic is the basic framework used to generate the laws in the USA (Maioni, 2020). Since the inception of the law concept in the USA, the four stages are setting the plan, the formulation stage, the implementation stages, and finally, the evaluation to ascertain that the laws serve the citizens’ best interests. The first stage is triggered by a problem in the health sector in a quest to introduce a long-lasting solution. The discussion in congress ensures that the bill is refined to serve the interests of the people. Once the policies are implemented, the evaluation stages ensure that the people served as proposed and if they don’t receive the services as planned, the implementation procedure is modified to meet the people’s needs.
The law Formulation process and the different arms of the government
The government works as a triangle integrating the three arms into the formulation of policies. The legislative arm of the government is responsible for forming the laws and policies governing the medical domain to have better services for the people in the country. The core business of the bicameral house is to discuss policies and ensure they align with the needs of the people. The professionals in the medical field develop the concept after analyzing the challenges facing the people.
The concept formulation involves the problem facing the people and how the policy will make it easy to serve them better. The proposal is then forwarded to congress through a member of congress who will propose the bill and invite other members of congress to give their views. It is prudent to note that the concept formulation is an open process that can originate from an ordinary citizen through a proposal to Congress (Longest 2016). Once the healthcare policy proposal is in congress, it is scrutinized for errors and is made better, after which a budgetary allocation is made to fund the financial policies. For Example, if the policy requires subsidizing insurance companies for low-income families, the country’s economic status must enable the laws to be enacted. If the country does not have adequate resources to pay the bills for the proposed solution, the proposal will not move to the next stage.
The executive arm of the government led by the president is tasked to ensure that laws passed in parliament are signed to become bills and legal bindings in the country. A copy of the laws is made available to all the governmental institutions required to use the laws in the country. The healthcare policy is communicated to the citizens and enacted to be used to help the citizen access better healthcare services in the country (Maioni, 2020). In the US judiciary, healthcare policy is scrutinized to ensure that the proposals align with the dictates of the constitution and that fundamental human rights are not jeopardized. The justice system then uses the laws passed to solve disputes concerning healthcare workers and patients in cases of a dispute between the different stakeholders.
The formulated healthcare policies take different forms, each having a unique application niche. The laws are used at all levels of the government, and non-governmental dealing such as insurance policies use laws of ensuring the premiums charged to patients do not exceed the required threshold. Rules and regulations are commonly used in institutions to ensure that the patient’s rights are not jeopardized (Longest 2016). Implementation decisions are used in healthcare organizations where the different stakeholders determine what is required to improve services and patient satisfaction.
Historical Example of a healthcare policy
An example of the formulation of a policy is the Health Insurance and Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in 1996. The principal motivation behind the formation of the law was to ensure that people were not deprived of their benefits once they lost their jobs. Further, the healthcare policy ensures that people are protected from discrimination by insurance companies (Moore, & Frye, 2019). Without the law, people who lost their jobs would have been discriminated against, while those suffering from chronic illnesses would not have been subjected to higher premiums. President Clinton signed the bill into law after a heated debate in congress.
Conclusion
The United States of America has a comprehensive set of rules to govern the healthcare domain. The process of formulating healthcare policies in the USA is a transparent process where any person can initiate the bill, but only members of congress table the bill for discussion. The nation’s economic status plays a significant role in either passing the bill or rejecting it at the discussion point. Further, political affiliation plays a significant role in the formulation of the laws because if there exists political intolerance between the major political outfits in the USA, the opposing side will turn down the proposal, and it may never be passed into law. Bill promoters must ensure that the country’s financial capacity can service the proposal and ensure political tolerance before fronting the bill.
References
Beaufort Longest 2016 Chapter1: Health and Health Policy.
Beaufort Longest 2016 Chapter2: The Context of Health Policymaking.
Beaufort Longest 2016 Chapter3: The process of Health MakingHealth and Health Policy.
Maioni, A. (2020). Parting at the crossroads: The emergence of health insurance in the United States and Canada (Vol. 66). Princeton University Press.
Moore, W., & Frye, S. (2019). Review of HIPAA, Part 1: history, protected health information, and privacy and security rules. Journal of nuclear medicine technology, 47(4), 269-272.