Ethical, legal, and financial challenges in implementing the Public Health Act

Ethical, Legal and Financial Challenges in Health Policies

Managing the Challenges of Administration of a Reformed System

Ethical, legal and financial issues in implementing health policies

Implementation of health policy leads to three main challenges. These are lack of government capacity, political climate and gaps in policy expertise. These are clearly beyond the reach of philanthropy to address, but they will build the context for the obligation of philanthropy (Gagnon, Francois, Jean, & Clemence, 2010).

Political Climate -- Controversy surrounding the passage of the Public Health Act continue at least through the period after the elections. Those conditions have entailments on how states begin the implementation process, and the political environment also has significances for how foundations choose to set priorities (Weil & Alan, 2010).

Lack of Government Capacity: Every state foundation and advocate express concern about the capacity of state governments to implement the Public Health Act (Weil & Alan, 2010). This is because of staff reductions, budget deficits, and potential turnover due to elections fallouts. Furthermore, multiple agencies need incorporation, some having less experience in health care insurance matters. Health care advocates also have little experience working with new agencies.

Policy Expertise Gaps -- in the hundreds of provisions of the Public Health Act are those that set up a new measure for elaborating health insurance coverage. This is the health insurance exchanges -- that establish broad supervision of the private insurance marketplace. There are issues about advocates and health agencies bearing little expertise in these areas and a lack of adequate health consulting capacity to meet the demands of all 50 states (Person, Debra, Joshua, & Jillian, 2009).

Public policy issues

While, there is a broad range of issues relating to health care reform execution that demand their attention, two issues have emerged, as the most vital to address over the next period: Public education and laying the groundwork for implementation (Deibert et al., 2006).

Public Education

It is evident that large segments of the public are unclear on what the new policy will do, and opposition and skepticism remain high. Although support is slowly improving, efforts are desirable to explain the law in a way people will realize and can take up their concerns.

Increasing public support in the next few years is critical in a bid to respond to efforts to undermine the law before it takes effect. In the short-term, public education efforts is needful to address the concern of the general public and target groups to benefit from early execution provisions, such as the, seniors with prescription drug costs, young adult under 26 years old, and small businesses (Gagnon et al., 2010).

Examples from states that have implemented health care reform laws demonstrate that early wins are decisive in acquiring public support. Therefore, there is the need to strategies in linking evaluation and monitoring of the early enforced provisions with measures to create a sense of confidence and momentum in the law (Gagnon et al., 2010).

Groundwork for Implementation layout

The scope and scale of this law presents a challenge at the federal government level and across the 50 states. State government officials face the task in formulating new state structures, regulations, and laws. Many agencies of the federal government from the Department of Health and Human Services in the United States to the Internal Revenue Service need to formulate guidance and regulations as well as provide supervision over a number of new matters relating to insurance related (Weil & Alan, 2010).

In the short-term, states need to make a number of timely decisions that set the stage for carrying out the vital parts of the policy. This needs to focus on the health insurance exchanges preparing for a comprehensive expansion in their Medicaid programs. Concurrently, they also must play upon the provisions that have early execution dates these include the high-risk pools. Other challenges faced in the implementation of the public health policy are Lack of Government Capacity and Gaps in Policy Expertise.

Low Government Capacity

Virtually without exclusion, every state advocate and foundation express concern about the state government capacity to implement the Policy. Years of budget deficits have resulting in fewer agency staff, with a majority of the talented and senior staff leaving their positions vacant. These agencies have less expertise with health care insurance matters, and health advocates have little potential to see to the policy entrenchment (Person et al., 2009).

Policy Expertise Gaps

Among the provisions of the health policy are the ones setting up new mechanisms for elaborating health insurance reporting. The health insurance exchange comprising of supervision of private insurance marketplace is at stake. These are fields that many health agencies and advocates have little expertise. Even amidst the country's largest health consulting firms there are worries that insufficient capacity exist to meet the demands of 50 states.

Recommendations

State and national funders should plan to engage and put in practice a wide range of strategies and activities to support execution of the health policies. The challenges highlighted above heighten the need to reorganize the measures taken to implement policy (Person et al., 2009). It represents a snapshot in the time, given how dynamic the implementation process is. Today, there would doubtless be more activities to report (and GIH plans to continue to monitor and highlight them). Evolving activities and strategies facilitate in informing a set of recommendations to funding agencies and health policy implementers and activities in the provision of health services.

Of all the options under the Privacy Rule for sharing protected health information for collaborative projects, OHCAs provide the greatest flexibility. This flexibility is beneficial insofar as it recognizes modern health-care system nature as a series of interconnected processes that may span different entities. However, if not implemented wisely, such flexibility may undermine the intent of the Privacy Rule by setting a lower set of privacy expectations than have existed in the past. It may be impractical to anticipate individuals to have a general accurate understanding on the workings of health-care organizations. Lower privacy expectations may be the price we must pay for a more efficient health-care delivery system (Deibert et al., 2006).