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Media and Health Policy Processes
There is no doubt that politics plays a crucial role in healthcare legislation and reforms in the United States. After all, the U.S. Congress passes laws, and so automatically any proposed legislation is passes or fails due to how political representatives act on the law. Professor Thomas Oliver (John Hopkins University) makes that point abundantly clear in his scholarly article. This paper references Oliver's article and a peer-reviewed piece in the journal Economics, Management, and Financial Markets (Boubacar, 2006). "The cost of health care has weighed down our economy and our conscious long enough," he stated in a speech to a joint session of Congress (CNN). Healthcare costs have risen "…four times faster than wages," Obama asserted, which qualifies as a "socially credible threat" and a "public health problem."
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act
It should be noted that when Barack Obama ran for election among his major points was the need to reform healthcare policies in America -- and the need to create new laws and policies. He was elected by a wide margin and he set out to develop legislation that could bring meaningful reform and could provide insurance for an estimated 40 million Americans that were uninsured at that time. Oliver explains that when there is a "socially credible threat" or a "clearly perceived cause of a
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Meanwhile, after reading Oliver's piece, a quick search on Google references the divisive politics that were involved in passing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (shortened to just the Affordable Care Act -- ACA) legislation in 2009 and 2010. One Republican member of the House (Anh Cao, R-LA) supported the initial vote on the ACA, and no U.S. Senators from the GOP supported the ACA. Politics in America is so polarized today that it comes as no shock on those watching news on television that the Republicans have voted 54 times in the House to defund or dismantle the ACA (OKeefe, 2014).
There is a theory circulating that it is more a matter that the GOP doesn't want Obama to have any legislative victories -- than that they actually oppose specific policies. This…
Works Cited
Boubacar, I, and Foster, S. (2014). Analysis of Small Business Owners' Perception of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: Evidence from Wisconsin Farmers.
Economics, Management, and Financial Markets, 9(1), 11-20.
CNN. (2009). Obama calls for health-care reform in 2009. Retrieved June 13, 2014, from http://www.brandnewz.com.
O'Keefe, E. (2014). The House has voted 54 times in 4 years on Obamacare. Here's the full list. The Washington Post. Retrieved June 13, 2014, from http://www.washingtonpost.com.
There are a number of issues involved in health care including taxation, the fear of socialized medicine and the budget. Many Americans are opposed to higher taxes for the wealthy due to the fact that they will be the ones paying for most government spending including the proposed heath care bill. These people also argue that it's the wealthy that create jobs through investing and if their taxes are
Transparency empowers consumers to become better shoppers. Economists assert that transparency stimulates productivity, for example, in exchange for money, one individual obtaining fair value. In every aspect, except healthcare, Davis points out, transparency, is supported. The contemporary dearth of transparency in healthcare has led to many Americans not being able to effectively shop for the best quality of service at acute care hospitals. Davis argues that transparency permits consumers,
As the sole owners of a license to practice medicine on which industries and other business entities build profits, they need to take solid steps to assert their rights. They listed strategies to put their situation and demands across to the current government. These strategies include a letter writing campaign, civil disobedience, a website for physician consensus, petitioning elected officials to take action on their concerns, email campaigns sent
Health Care Reform: In March 2010, after protracted public and political debate, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) was enacted into law by President Barack Obama. This legislation was one of the many health care reforms initiatives that have sought to rectify major features of the health care system in the United States such as service delivery, care coordination, and financing. Since its enactment, PPACA is considered as a
(Menzel, 1990, p. 3) Fisher, Berwick, & Davis alude to the idea of integration in health care, with providers linking as well as creating networks of electronic medical records and other cost improvement tactics. The United States and other nations over the last twenty or so years, have begun a sweeping change in health care delivery, regarding the manner in which health information is input, stored and accessed. Computer use
As a result, millions of Americans remain unable to bear the heavy financial toll of medical expenses. Indeed, the problem of a lack of insurance for many is related to the problem of the cost of healthcare. So confirms the article by Consumer Reports (CR) (2008), which finds that "health-insurance premiums have grown faster than inflation or workers' earnings over the past decade, in parallel with the equally rapid