Government Role in Healthcare - Essay Sample

Healthcare is a critical department that requires collaboration and cooperation of every stakeholder involved. The government is the key stakeholder because it makes policies, creates infrastructure, and regulates the way the healthcare system runs. Both Federal and state government have a role to play, but it is important to understand where each level of the government is the best performing. As Gluck (2017) explains, the government has a responsibility to provide quality care for its people. The Federal government can best regulate the policy frameworks. This involves making policies like the insurance laws that apply to all the hospitals in the healthcare system. To enhance quality care delivery there should be common policies that apply to all healthcare institutions; therefore, the Federal government can successfully ensure that the enacted policies are implemented. The state government can involve in the human resource aspects of the healthcare system. Hiring employees including physicians, nurses, and other workers in the hospital should be the responsibility of the state government.

The impact of placing the regulatory authority at each level of the government can be both beneficial and detrimental to the healthcare system. The advantage of having regulatory authority at each level of the government is that it ensures that policies enacted at the national level are equally and successfully implemented at the local level (Motaze et al., 2015). The state or local governments ensure that the directives given at the Federal level are implemented at the grassroots because they maintain contact with the citizens directly. Therefore, it is easy to implement a policy when there are two levels of government. The weakness, on the other hand, is that having regulatory authority at each level of the government may reduce the effectiveness of the policy or program intended to help the people due to conflict at the Federal and state levels. Each level of the government makes policies and sometimes, conflict can reduce the effectiveness of the intended policy on the healthcare sector and on people as well. The attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has shown division among states with those that support the president showing intent and commitment to change the policy while their opponents claim that the ACA policy should not be changed. When there is such conflict in a country the healthcare sector does not improve.

Private regulation in the healthcare and health insurance has been cited as a strategy towards improving the healthcare and solving the crisis that has affected the sector for many years. Cost and quality of healthcare are concepts that are intimately intertwined in the healthcare sector (Avraham, 2011). Therefore, there is need to solve the crisis related to underuse, misuse, and overuse of the quality and cost of care in the U.S. However, people have different opinions regarding private regulation of healthcare and insurance. For those who argue against it, private regulation is associated with many significant shortcomings including time-consumption, inefficiency, and costly. Since it takes more time to resolve a case, the private regulation merely meets the needs of the insured (Jost, 2009). Insured have difficulties in pursuit of their rights; for instance, it costs much money to hire a lawyer and sue an insurer for denial. However, the high cost and inefficiency of private regulation can be minimized through alternative dispute resolution mechanisms which can be facilitated by both the Federal and state governments. The involvement of the government ensures that the insurers meet their commitments to the insured.

References

Avraham, R. (2011). Private Regulation. Harv. JL & Pub. Pol'y, 34, 543.

Gluck, A. (March 18, 2017). America Needs to Decide: Is Health Care Something We owe our Citizens. Vox. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/3/6/14826974/health-care-aca-philosophy-republican-obamacare

Jost, S. T. (2009). The Regulation of Private Health Insurance. National Academy of Social Insurance. Retrieved from https://www.nasi.org/usr_doc/The_Regulation_of_Private_Health_Insurance.pdf

Motaze, N. V., Chi, C. P., OngoloZogo, P., Ndongo, J. S., & Wiysonge, C. S. (2015). Government regulation of private health insurance. The Cochrane Library. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4441071/