Principles of Economics for Evaluating and assessing the need for the Public Health Initiative
The principles of economics underlying the evaluation and assessment processes for the Rising Heights Program for HIV Care premise on the concepts of cost-benefit analysis and cost-effective analysis. The cost-benefit principle hinges on understanding the economic return on investments from the program (Fuchs, 2009). In the context of the Rising Heights Program’s goals, the economic returns on investments may be lower health costs, improved welfare for affected people, and reduced incidences of adverse health outcomes. Other benefits could be fewer hospital admissions, lower mortality rates and reduced health resources for the hospital facilities (Banta & De Wit, 2008). Such benefits would accrue from the proper management of HIV/AIDS in the community. The principle of cost-effectiveness also underlies the implementation of the Rising Heights Health Program because its pioneers are aware of the relative costs and outcomes associated with the program (Brooklyn Plaza Medical Center, 2013). This is the premise of the cost-effectiveness principle because it attributes an economic benefit to the effects of a health program (Honeycutt et al., 2006). The ideal goal of the effective implementation of this economic principle is the maximum reduction of new HIV infection incidences in Brooklyn (through minimum investments). To realize such an outcome, the Brooklyn Plaza Medical Center (2013), which oversees the program, uses the most cost-effective health interventions to achieve these goals. This principle means that the institution should use cheaper health interventions to achieve the maximum positive health outcomes.
Is the Public Health Initiative a Micro or Macroeconomic Program?
Macroeconomic and microeconomic economic concepts are two models that often underscore the implementation of different health programs. According to Honeycutt et al. (2006), the macroeconomic economic principle, when analyzed in the context of the US health care sector, refers to economic principles, or programs, that affect the entire nation. Conversely, the microeconomic principle refers to health programs that affect smaller jurisdictions, such as a state, or a lower geographical region (Fuchs, 2009). Based on this analysis, the Rising Heights Health program is a microeconomic health program because it focuses on a small community in New York – Brooklyn. Indeed, only a small population of people (a couple of hundreds of thousands) could benefit from it (Scutti, 2013). Furthermore, the health program only focuses on individual components of the larger Brooklyn health care system. It also focuses on understanding and improving the health choices made by small economic units of the larger Brooklyn population. Certainly, it focuses on improving the health conditions of low-income people living in Brooklyn, New York (Brooklyn Plaza Medical Center, 2013). More specifically, it focuses on improving HIV/AIDS management efforts among groups of people in Brooklyn who lack proper shelter, who do not have a stable job or income and who do not have access to adequate health care services. In this regard, the health program only focuses on a small sub economic group of people who live in Brooklyn (Scutti, 2013; Brooklyn Plaza Medical Center, 2013).
Is the Result of the Initiative a Public or Private Good?
The health outcomes of the Rising Heights Health Program are public goods because the target population can simultaneously benefit from the program’s goals. These goals include reduction in new HIV infections, proper management of HIV/AIDS, HIV counseling, HIV testing, medical referrals, medical evaluations and similar services. These services are beneficial to the underserved communities in Northwest and Central Brooklyn, where the health program focuses on (Brooklyn Plaza Medical Center, 2013). For example, a reduction in HIV infections, through increased HIV testing, would benefit the Brooklyn populace because victims would be aware of their conditions and prevent the spread of the disease accordingly. Similarly, the HIV counseling services offered to victims would help them to better cope with their condition and reduce the likelihood that they would become a burden to their families, or to the society. Consequently, such services would help them to live positive and healthy lives as uninfected people do. Based on these benefits, the Rising Heights Health Program emerges as a public good because it does not benefit a few people, as private goods do. Furthermore, the nature of private goods is such that if one person benefits, the rest suffer (Honeycutt et al., 2006). This is not the case with the Rising Heights Health program (Banta & De Wit, 2008).
Financing Sources of the Initiative
The Brooklyn Plaza Medical Center (2013), which administers the Rising Heights Program for HIV care, is a federally qualified health center. In this regard, its main funding source is the Federal government. However, the institution also gets funding from the New York state government. Most of the funds used to run the Rising Heights HIV care program come from Part C of the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, which provides grants to different community-based organizations, such as the Brooklyn Plaza Medical Center (2013), which provides early intervention health services for HIV/AIDS management. This source of funds has been instrumental in paying workers who have participated in the program by providing HIV care to affected populations. The last source of funding for the health program is donations from well-wishers and charity organizations within New York and other parts of the country. However, this source of funding contributes a small portion of the program’s overall funding. Therefore, it has been useful in supplementing some of the funding gaps existing in the program’s overall budget (Brooklyn Plaza Medical Center, 2013).
How with the Rising heights Program affect the Supply and demand of Public Health Services?
Many factors affect the supply and demand of public health services. Furthermore, different factors affect how these two forces interact in the entire health care system (Scutti, 2013; Brooklyn Plaza Medical Center, 2013). For example, insurance players, number of buyers of public health services, consumer tastes and preferences, income, price of substitutes, and number of sellers are some factors that influence the supply and demand of public health services (Ginsburg, 2008). The Rising Heights HIV Care Program would also influence the supply and demand of health services in the same way as the above factors do. For example, the provision of free HIV care services would decrease the number of people requiring HIV care services in different health care centers around Brooklyn (Weinstein & Skinner, 2010; Scutti, 2013; Brooklyn Plaza Medical Center, 2013). Consequently, the demand for health care services would decrease in the same regard because huge populations of patients who want seek HIV care services using alternative health care programs would decrease (Ginsburg, 2008). A reduction in health service demand would automatically lead to a reduction in prices, and possibly a reduction in insurance premiums, which is a desirable outcome for most residents of Brooklyn (Getzen, 2013).
The Rising Heights Health Program would also affect the supply of health services because it has helped to increase the provision of HIV care services to residents of Brooklyn (Brooklyn Plaza Medical Center, 2013). Indeed, there are health care service providers who provide HIV care services to the same population, but their services are often discriminatory because they mostly target insured populations (Weinstein & Skinner, 2010; Scutti, 2013; Brooklyn Plaza Medical Center, 2013). Therefore, low-income populations in the area underserved because of different socioeconomic factors that prevent them from accessing the same services (Scutti, 2013). The Rising Heights Health Program solves this problem by increasing the supply of HIV care services to this population group. An increase in supply could affect the New York health market by reducing the price of substitute products and possibly increasing the number of sellers in the market. A deeper analysis of this issue reveals that the success of the Rising Heights Health program would shift the supply curve leftwards by increasing the number of players who offer HIV care services (Weinstein & Skinner, 2010). An increase in the supply of health care services would also reduce the cost of resources needed in the provision of HIV care services and minimize the cost of health resources needed in the supply of the same services because service providers would have a bigger market to supply their products. Consequently, this would lead to a reduction in the cost of health resources needed in HIV care. Based on these dynamics, the Rising Heights Health program would generally reduce the demand of HIV care services and increase the supply of the same in Brooklyn.
References
Banta, H. D., & De Wit, G. A. (2008). Public health services and cost-effectiveness analysis. Annual Review of Public Health, 29, 383–397.
Brooklyn Plaza Medical Center. (2013). Brooklyn Plaza HIV Early Intervention Services Program. Web.
Fuchs, V. A. (2009). Cost shifting does not reduce the cost of health care. JAMA: Journal of the American Medical Association, 302(9), 999–1000.
Getzen, T. E. (2013). Health economics and financing (5th ed.). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.
Ginsburg, P. B. (2008). High and rising health care costs: Demystifying US health care spending (The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Report No. 16). Web.
Honeycutt, A. A., Clayton, L., Khavjou, O., Finkelstein, E. A., Prabhu, M., Blitstein, J. L…Renaud, J. M. (2006). Guide to analyzing the cost-effectiveness of community public health prevention approaches. Web.
Scutti, S. (2013). HIV in Brooklyn on the rise, particularly among borough’s young black gay men. Web.
Weinstein, M. C., & Skinner, J. A. (2010). Comparative effectiveness and health care spending—Implications for reform. New England Journal of Medicine, 362(5), 460–465.