Healthcare Economics
The government has the mandate of ensuring that all citizens get access to quality healthcare services. Many sectors in a nation directly or indirectly rely on health-related issues. A country with a weak health sector is doomed to fail and always has qualms relating to the provision of other services. The economy significantly depends on the ability of the government to provide health services to its citizens.
Pumping enough cash into the health sector drastically improves the industry by a considerable margin. Each country employs qualified professionals in the health sector to ensure that the industry receives the best personnel. Consequently, the probability of the high demand for specialists in the area vastly increases. The reason behind this logic is quality services give room for an increase in demand of the same (Alam et al., 2007). Consumers are always affiliated with goods and services that customize their needs. Therefore, the financial stability of the healthcare hinges on the presence of quality health services. Customers become willing to invest or utilize the healthcare services of any country if they feel that the standards match the quality that they desire.
The theories of supply and demand in economics really affect the health care of each country. Healthcare is affected by the floated principles, values and customs established. These theories cut across the industry. Consumers always seek high-quality services; Conversely, if there is a supply of health workers of poor quality, the consumers will have a low demand for such a facility. The health care capitalizes on economic tenets to function as guidance when during decision-making. The health sector has to decide on ways of utilizing available resources. Proper employment of resources is necessary for promoting a growing curve in the health sector. Ethical decision-making leads to the optimal use of available resources. However, real growth depends on the ability of the health sectors in countries to use the latest technology in the development of treatments for patients.
The difference in finance between profit and non-profit sectors has played a vital role in affecting how they conduct their services. Investors usually run the healthcare sectors that generate profits. In most circumstances, it has been observed that health sectors focus on making a profit while offering better services compared to non-profit healthcare sectors (De &Sonescher, 1978). Profit-based hospitals provide better services because they want to attract more customers. The non-profit hospital usually struggles a lot in optimizing the quality of services because they always feel that they have very little to lose. However, it is not still the case that non-profit hospitals offer relatively weak services to profit-based hospitals.
Economic policies and legislation affect how healthcare sectors perform their services. Profit and non-profit hospitals must abide by the laid down rules and regulations. The government has established corporate laws that all hospital must abide by. They must be registered and given licenses to operate. Besides, the hospitals have to be inspected by quality assurance officers from the government to ensure that there is compliance with laid down rules. For these hospitals to succeed in their objectives, they must ensure that they adhere to the laid down health measures so that they can achieve their economic goals of providing quality services, operating at minimal losses and utilizing the available resources for growth and making a meaningful profit. In some instances, both profit and non-profit based hospital are affected by the limited amount of resources hence unable to provide some services. Government policies have affected mostly the profit-based hospital because they always find it challenging to comply with the government policies on taxation.
A health disparity is defined as the burden of sickness felt by one group of people in relationship to another. Economic resources such as limited resources, lack of money, inability to access health insurance, and race affect the delivery of services to patients. Patients that are poor to the extent they lack enough funds to finance their health services cannot manage to access quality health services. Health disparity and economic policies differ in such a way that the availability of resources does not affect the quality of services delivered.
The Affordable Care Act came up with legislation regulating the pricing of drugs. The act specified that many patients were unable to get affordable healthcare services because they were unable to pay for the drugs. The law has caused an improvement in service delivery since the government now subsidizes drugs. The disparity of healthcare has been included in the healthcare strategic planning because the American government wants to ensure that all the citizens have equal access to health services at an affordable rate (Hafner, Memmon, &Alam, 2007). It has been observed the minorities in the USA have been endangered by highly infectious diseases (McMorrow et al., 2015), so the government has come up with a preventive measure to ensure that they are immunized against all forms of life-threatening diseases.
It has also been observed that the minorities are not able to acquire quality services because the United States of America is facing a deficit of health officers, unstable health sector, lack of enough resources, and failure of private hospitals and publics to corporate. To ensure that better health services are provided, the American government has taken steps in providing enough public health workers. Furthermore, the government has encouraged the private sector to be corporate with the public sector in ensuring that all the citizens get customized services. In addition to that, the government has increased its financing on community-based projects. These projects have helped a lot in transforming the lives of many Americans. The government has involved itself in the responsibility of educating its minorities on how they can prevent themselves from the outbreak of diseases. Another step that the government has taken in improving healthcare is by providing affordable health insurance services through the availability of Medicare. Based on this approach, many citizens can access health services of higher quality because it is cheap and very little is required to be paid.
The government has engaged itself in building health facilities in all the parts of the country. Such facilities have reduced congestion in the hospitals by decreasing the ratio between a medic, and a patient has been reduced. This idea of the government has led to increased feedback on the positive improvements from the citizens. There has been a reduction in deaths affiliated with critical illnesses. The economic policies on the optimal use of resources have helped a lot in these changes.
References
Alam, M., Hafner, M., Memon, M., & Hung, P. (2007). Modeling and enforcing advanced access control policies in healthcare systems with SECTET. In 1st International Workshop on Model-Based Trustworthy Health Informaton Systems, MOTHIS.
De Brunhoff, S., &Sonenscher, M. (1978). The state, capital and economic policy. London: Pluto Press.
Hafner, M., Memon, M., &Alam, M. (2007, September). Modeling and enforcing advanced access control policies in healthcare systems with sectet. In International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems (pp. 132-144). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
McMorrow, S., Long, S. K., Kenney, G. M., & Anderson, N. (2015). Uninsurance disparities have narrowed for black and Hispanic adults under the Affordable Care Act. Health Affairs,