Health Care Changes and Trends The healthcare industry in currently undergoing a highly necessary phase of reform. Following the enactment of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), hospitals, physicians, patients and economists are working to determine what the legislation could mean for them. The reality though is that the myriad changes on the horizon are difficult to predict because they are determined by the intercession of a wide variance of independent forces. Indeed, as the discussion here below shows, these forces fall into the categories of Economics, Culture, Technology and Government.

Economics

Economics play an especially pertinent role in defining the healthcare experience for a great many Americans. Indeed, one of the greatest causes for reform is the inequality that permeates the healthcare system. The rate of growth in healthcare costs has far exceeded the natural rate of inflation, largely to the benefit of corporations such as insurance companies and managed healthcare firms. There has also been a high and evident correlation between wealth and quality of care. Indeed, the connection is sufficiently high to support the claim that financial security is a high level of determinant for such indicators as access to health insurance and the nature of health insurance available to a given individual.

According to Bernstein (2009), "a recession almost immediately leads to loss of coverage for many people. Studies show that a 1.0...

While few employers actually drop coverage, they may cut costs by changing the benefit and/or restructuring cost-sharing with employees. Typically, employers in low-wage jobs (or those working in small firms) are most likely to be uninsured after losing their job, but this recession is affecting a broader swath of the workforce." (Bernstein, p. 1)
By the same token, improvements in the costs and inequality of healthcare may lead to greater economic stability for Americans on the whole. The White House (2012) estimates that "slowing the annual growth rate of health care costs by 1.5 percentage points would increase real gross domestic product (GDP), relative to the no-reform baseline, by over 2% in 2020 and nearly 8% in 2030." (White House, p. 1)

Culture

With changes occurring in policy and economics, the culture of healthcare is changing as well. For instance, as new Information Technology strategies such as Electronic Health Records are introduced, the risk to patient privacy becomes higher. As Meingast et al. (2006) warn, "remote patient monitoring is becoming more feasible as specialized sensors can be placed inside homes. The combination of these technologies will improve the quality of health care by making it more personalized and reducing costs and medical errors. While there are benefits to technologies, associated privacy and security issues need to be analyzed to make these systems socially acceptable." (Meingast, p. 5453)

Balance must be achieved in managing this concern while still advancing the efficiency of our healthcare system. Cultural changes are occurring at a more human level as well. The concept of normality, is changing as we become more diverse as a society. Differences in race, ethnicity, language or sexual orientation may promote different health beliefs. It is important to manage these without prejudice while differentiating cultural difference from risk-taking behavior. The…