Health Care Policy or Delivery System Challenge

¶ … Healthcare Delivery System Challenges

The American healthcare system has been criticized as favoring the middle and upper classes while ignoring the lower classes. Based on these speculations, the federal government has constantly tried to institute reforms in the healthcare sector though some of the proposals have failed to overhaul the industry. With rising insurance costs, the number of citizens barred from accessing quality healthcare has increased to more than 45 million uninsured Americans. On the same note, it is hypothesized that with time, the problems currently witnessed in the industry are likely to increase and finding solutions to them will be a tall order for the government (Stolberg & Pear, 2010). Despite the advent of new technology in the sector, which is likely to improve service delivery over the years, it is speculated that the cost of new tests and treatments will outweigh the savings. With the better technology, physicians will be able to unveil new treatment methods for their patients which will ultimately lengthen patients' lives while increasing the number of citizens served daily. On the contrary, rising living costs is likely to make managers refrain from employing new staff and as such, they are forced to reduce insurance benefits to the employees. Such occurrences are likely to increase the number of uninsured citizens and to curb such developments; the government is unveiling new strategies beneficial to the health sector.

Healthcare Challenges and Reforms

The American healthcare is characterized by different challenges and to reduce the impact of such challenges, the federal government has unveiled several reform plans to improve the country's healthcare delivery system. Some of the reforms unveiled by the government include increasing the use of technology via restructuring anti-trust regulations imposed on insurance companies. In addition, there are other strategies that have been unveiled by the Obama administration (Woolhandler & Himmelstein, 1997). The reforms proposed by the government include cost-cutting in the insurance sector, automated payment system, subsidizing healthcare taxations, and increasing the number of doctors serving the public. As highlighted in the above section, a good example of the reforms passed by the government is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Foremost, the reforms call for universal coverage which entails that all American citizens are supposed to have access to health plans of their choice without discrimination and at affordable rates. This is contrary to the former regulations which required the individuals to have health care plans different from their family members and besides, they are liable to state funding to cover their medical plans. On the same note, the reform opposes the current employer-based insurance system which bars individuals from seeking insurance different from the ones offered by their organizations; most individuals lose their positions for fear for losing their insurance coverage. Based on this, the proposed reforms ascertain that employees are allowed to select the insurance scheme they like or accept their job-based insurance. For the employees who fail to accept the job-based insurance plans, the government will offer them subsidized plans while poor individuals will receive the government insurance plan free of charge. Based on this, individuals will be able to select the insurance they view as beneficial to them.

The next recommendation of the reforms is the integration of automated medical records by medical practitioners. This will ensure the medical records are kept safe and the probability of interference would be low (Swanson, 2009).In addition, automating the medical records will ensure that the medics produce bill plans for their patients automatically though charging a minimal fee. This is essential for healthcare institutions since it removes the need for pre-approval requirements and by integrating the evidence-based practices, the plan will embed its own guidelines in patients' electronic records. According to the Congressional Budget Office, unveiling new technological infrastructure has the potential of reducing healthcare costs whilst helping the institutions provide improved and quality healthcare to patients. However, using health IT in an un-integrated setting is not able to realize all the projected savings.

The subsequent proposed recommendation for solving the problem in the healthcare department is increasing the coverage of preventive care. Preventive care entails issuing preventive strategies to individuals to reduce the chances of falling sick as well as ways of managing some illnesses without seeking the services of medics. This will help the government reduce health care spending since most of the federal government's savings will come from large-scale savings due to preventive care offered by the health sector. As an example, a cancer patient can be prevented from incurring huge medical expenses by diagnosing them at stage one which is preventive scanning (Blumberg & Holahan, 2009). Such initiatives reduce chances of medications once the disease is at the full-blown stage therefore, there will be little constraints on the existing healthcare costs thus helping medics focus on other medical activities.

The next reform is overhauling doctor's incentives. Currently doctors are paid for services provided as opposed to having a fixed monthly salary a factor that has constantly driven up the cost of getting quality medical assistance thus driving medical costs for most citizens. Therefore, ensuring that medical practitioners charge a flat premium for services offered to patents can help reduce costs incurred by citizens as opposed to charging fees for each individual service offered. This modification of medics' incentives is likely to increase patients' access to medical assistance and doctors will be forced to offer additional services to solving medical problems efficiently.

The other proposed reform is restructuring the private health insurance industry; a major player in the American health insurance sector. It is perceived that reforming the private insurance sector is capable of increasing the number of Americans accessing insurance schemes, but, is unlikely to reduce the rate of growth in health care spending. Nonetheless, there are considerations that should be met first before the private insurance sector is reformed. This will help in eliminating unexpected consequences while ensuring the long-term viability of the reformed system. Moreover, there are speculations regarding the impact of employee 'pay or play requirements' as a way of increasing healthcare coverage with some citizens alleging that current 'pay or play' strategies are limited in their ability to increase coverage among the working poor.