The Role of Government in Healthcare

 

Examine the concerns and issues within each simulation coming from each of the following stakeholder perspectives:

o patient

o family

o Health care professionals.

Determine what could have been done differently to address the issues identified in all the options in relation to cost, quality, and access.

Trevor is the patient in the simulation, and he needs to seek medical services as he has bouts of indigestion and nausea. However, Trevor does not have a medical insurance plan that covers him. The medical insurance is important for patients to access services as it assists them to pay for the treatment. Trevor’s family in the simulation is the wife who has concerns and issues about her husband’s health condition. She understands that the husband needs assistant from a healthcare professional but is currently unable to do so. On the other hand, the healthcare professionals are concerned that Trevor should first access a primary care provider.

To address the healthcare issue at hand, the patient who has no insurance cover should access an emergency room for services on his current condition. At the ER, Trevor would be able to access quality care, and he would be allowed to settle the bills later. His condition needs care as soon as possible, and since he cannot access the usual healthcare professionals, then he has to also inquire in the health facility if there are free medications that can help him ease the pain.

Question 2: For this discussion, you will use the timeline in the textbook to discuss the impact of one of the influencing factors.

One of the influencing factors to the development of the healthcare sector in the 21st

century is the surprising health costs, poor quality of services, and lack of patient insurance (Jiang, Friedman, & Jiang, 2013). The public and the policy makers were focused on transforming the sector, and the former US president Obama signed a very important law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that was. The act is one of the most important expansions in the health care sector by the government that was aiming at increasing the accessibility, quality, and reducing cost of healthcare especially for the US citizens not insured under the private healthcare. The low-income individuals have also been catered under the act as the law required every citizen to be insured. In terms of cost, the advocates for the law believe that the deficit in the budget will reduce by $143 billion over a period of 10 years and it will cost the government only $928 billion (Batnitzky, Hayes, & Vinall, 2014).

References

Batnitzky, A., Hayes, D., & Vinall, P.E. (2014). The U.S. healthcare system: An introduction. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc

Jiang, H. J., Friedman, B., & Jiang, S. (2013). Hospital cost and quality performance in relation to market forces: An examination of U. S. community hospitals in the ‘post-managed care era.’ International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics, 13(1), 53-71. doi:10.1007/s10754-013-9122-9