Mayo Clinic Lobbying Efforts

Mayo Clinic Influences When it comes to healthcare, it would be nice if economic and other exterior influences did not put pressure on things like quality of care and so forth. However, the propensity for politicians to squabble, the regulations and mandates that come through and the affordability dilemma that many people face, this is basically impossible with healthcare. While reputable and ethically rich organizations like the Mayo Clinic may try to stay away from this and they often do, they are certainly not immune to this phenomenon.

Indeed, they have to worry about things like national and world economic issues, the sustainability of the current organizational care models, healthcare reform and the litany of healthcare regulations that are added, changed or even removed as the months and years go on. While the Mayo Clinic is at its own standard in many ways, there are still some issues and pitfalls that they must address as part of doing their job.

Analysis The Mayo Clinic stands, like other institutions, has been greatly impacted by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and the various other pieces of legislation that come from the federal government and address issues of medical care, specialized medicine and payment plans. Prior pieces of legislation that have come across in recent months and years would be the updates and changes to Medicare, HIPAA and a few others.

As the Mayo Clinic continues to implement new and advanced technologies and services like telemedicine, it pushes and lobbies for Congress to include these services within the basic scope of federally funded programs like Medicaid, the national program to provide healthcare services at an affordable rate to people with little to no income but that yet have healthcare needs that need to be addressed (Hiers, 2015).

Given the lobbying and other efforts of the Mayo Clinic, they are at the forefront of the evolution of medicine and the merger of business, government and medical provision that is the current culture in which modern medicine is situated. The example above, on its own, proves that outside influences do impact the Clinic. Beyond that, further influences may be identified in an economy that is bordering on possible recession despite an arduous and long recovery since 2009 when the Great Recession is purported to have ended.

These economic troubles would further weigh on the ability of the Clinic to continue to operate. This is because it depends on privately funded donations as well as revenue backed by federally funded programs. Indeed, those federal funds could dry up if the economy falters and/or the budget of the government shift to other endeavors such as extension of unemployment and other social services and programs, such as they tend to do in the wake of a recession or other weak economic activity.

To state the obvious, this could prove detrimental to the operations of the Clinic. If demand for services drops off like it did after the housing and credit busts in 2008, Mayo Clinic may once again find its balance sheet in a state of shock (Evans, 2012). Given all of that, it is clear that the United States and world economies faltering could very well thus have a negative impact on the Mayo Clinic if those economies continue to teeter and threaten to collapse.

Several indicators suggest that economy has not revived in the way that many hoped it would. Beyond that, intervention from the Fed and other central banking institutions can only do so much and/or can end up being counter-productive in the long run. As such, a collapse appears to be unavoidable at this point, at least to many. Indeed, with the United Kingdom having voted to depart from the European Union, this could indeed throw another proverbial wrench into the machine that is the global economy.

This is because things could get ugly based on how the leaders of the world, including those here in the United States, react to the events that are playing out right now. These different leaders could find themselves at great odds when it comes to different subjects, issues and points of debate (Barnato, 2016).

The very high stakes and vicious rancor of the current United States election cycle that is dominated by Donald Trump and his candidacy against Hillary Clinton will just add proverbial gas to the fire irrespective of who actually ends up winning (Meyer, 2016). When it comes to regulations and laws like the aforementioned PPACA, there is good reason that firms and organizations like the Mayo Clinic lobby and make efforts to have legislation altered or changed both before and after it is enacted.

To be sure, there is a lot of debate about how effective (or ineffective) the PPACA and other laws are when it comes to their stated goals. For example, many hailed the PPACA as being good in that it prevented health insurance companies from imposing waiting period due to pre-existing conditions.

However, there are some situations where such a waiting period is not the worst idea and/or people need to be dissuaded from being "free riders." What this means is that there are some people that can absolutely afford health insurance and/or can get it through their employer but they make a conscious choice not to even with the fine they must pay to the federal government and the Internal Revenue Service for not having coverage.

What is happening, at least in some cases, is that people that are doing this are waiting until they have a medical emergency or chronic condition emerge and then they are getting coverage. When this happens, that party has paid little to nothing into the pool of money that insurance companies are using for claims but they are using a huge amount of money from that same pot just as soon as they enroll.

It is akin, at least to many, to being able to buy a homeowner's insurance policy when one's house is burning down. At the same time, people that are poor and/or lacking coverage through no fault of their own should not be bankrupted because they have to wait six months to a year to get coverage. To be sure, people with heart disease, diabetes and other expensive diseases to have need and deserve to have the care they need.

Money should not figure into that question unless the patient is the one creating the problem, as indicated above (Hitzlik, 2015). This is just one example of how the system might or definitely needs some tweaks and the Mayo Clinic is certainly one of.