Nursing Advocacy for Veterans: Exploring Impactful Healthcare Policies

(Exploring Impactful Healthcare Policies)

Question description

Part A

Demonstrate your knowledge and insight of health policy at a “capstone level.” Please visit http://www.va.gov/nursing/

and read one or more current or past regulations or policies that affected or will affect our US Veterans —and with your enlightened understanding on how important it is that regulations and policies be kept “current” in the context of our rapidly changing society and health care system, write no less than 250 words and no more than 500 words of verbiage APA format be sure to include a title page and a reference list with 2 peer reviewed journals.

Part B

From a nurse perspective respond to each classmate’s post with 100 words APA format and in cite text. Use at least 1 peer reviewed journal as references. Be respectful and courteous.

Fica response

Ethical issues about an individual’s ability to obtain appropriate access to health care services (Access to healthcare in the U. S., n.d). This inequality and often unethical inconsistency in access are primarily due to a lack of universal medical insurance. Unlike European and other industrialized countries, the United States does not have universal health care coverage. As a result, almost forty-four million Americans lacked health insurance coverage during 2002 (Trotochaud, 2006).

Although there have been significant declines in the number of uninsured since 2002, mostly due to because of the Affordable Care Act, presently millions remain without affordable coverage. Among the majority of the remaining uninsured are poor adults in states that either chose not to expand Medicaid or undocumented immigrants who do not qualify for Medicaid or Marketplace coverage. I believe that healthcare should be a right, not a privilege (Vasques, 2017). According to the US Census Bureau, there are some factors that negatively impact an individual’s ability to access health care coverage. These factors are race, age, gender, education, and employment status. Research showed that people who have health insurance in this country have better access to healthcare and better healthcare outcomes than does who do not. However, this does not mean that all individuals with health insurance received “equal treatment.” People who receive Medicaid often complained that private providers refuse to accept them as patients. Patients who are enrolled in managed care complained that their treatment options are more limited than private traditional private insurance because of the use of gatekeepers, requires authorizations, and queuing and even people with private insurance also suggest that out-of-pocket cost and deductibles the cost of care beyond the reach of many (Vasques, 2017).

It is essential that more health plans, both non-profit and for-profit, start to be held accountable for fairness framework to begin the strict process of addressing issues of fairness, entitlement to an equitable distribution of our limited health care resources. More importantly, this process must be collaborative and include a wide variety of decision-makers and stakeholders across all levels of society. Raising social awareness around the unjust distribution of resources and the lack of access to basic health care services by many impoverished and disadvantaged individuals is a critical first step. Lastly, The U.S. health care system needs to change the way people from received health care services based on their ability to pay and begin to focus on a practical method for rationing services as called for by the theory of justice Reference(Exploring Impactful Healthcare Policies)

Trotochaud, K. (2006). Ethical issues and access to healthcare. Journal Of Infusion Nursing, 29(3), 165-170.

Dirks response

When examining the concept of health care as a right, one may consider it as either a legal or a moral one. People argue whether healthcare is a right, a privilege, or a responsibility. A system that distributes healthcare unevenly, on the basis of any determining factor other than necessity, raises numerous questions about how ethical that system is. In a society where disparity in the level of care or access to care exists, inevitably there will be individuals who fail to receive the care for which they desperately need (Fuchs, 1996). Failure to access care early on will undoubtedly lead to individuals consuming a greater proportion of healthcare resources, should the degree of their morbidity escalate, and therefore increase the burden on health provision.

Although some might consider that enshrining health care as a right in law may lead to over-utilization of healthcare resources, the consumption of these resources does not result in fiscal or otherwise measurable gain for the individual seeking them. Ethical frameworks further support the notion of healthcare as a human right (Fuchs & Emaneul, 2005).

1. Suffering from a lack of medical care is harmful.
2. If it is within our power to prevent something harmful from happening, without sacrificing anything nearly as important, it is wrong not to do so.
3. By improving health care, suffering can be prevented without making significant personal losses.
4. Therefore, by not improving health care, and to an extent, by not introducing health care as a right, we are doing something wrong.

With that said, it could be argued that although people need health care, food, and shelter, this does not necessarily obligate others to make such provisions available. Food, for example, is not considered a right; companies are permitted to sell it, and it can be withheld from those who cannot afford it. The difficulty in introducing health care as a right lies in the fact that care, unlike other goods, cannot be simply quantified and allocated equally to members of a society (Fuchs & Emaneul, 2005). Thus, there comes a point where the lack of responsibility of one person must be compensated by an increase in another, where the healthy pay for the unhealthy. We, therefore, find that the question of whether health care should be offered as a right very complex, with ethical, judicial and financial tensions.

Many think that an all Payer System could be a better regulation approach to access healthcare. This system has control over multiple insurance payers and thus standardize payments for physicians through a governmental authority. This can lead to equality when paying for the third-party payers. Also, health care providers or physicians will not be motivated to care for a patient more that another because their payments are uniform across several insurance payers. Also, physicians will not be able to offset the plan of cost reduction by cost shifting because no insurance company underpays or overpays for any service (Vladeck & Rice, 2009). This system allows control over the market for the patients (demand side) who can now be financially safe in their choices of health care providers (supply side). The all-Payer system programs allow for hospitals to get reimbursements when they treat the uninsured, so this seems like an added value benefit for both the provider and the purchaser.(Exploring Impactful Healthcare Policies)

A fundamental difficulty with considering healthcare as a right is that this right, unlike many others, is dependent upon the resources of a society, and the ability to meet the demands of the population without disparity in distribution and allocation of medical care. As such, even if this right were to be upheld universally, there would still be a void in care for individuals between different societies (Freeman, Holderby-Fox, & Housepian, 2015). To address this apparent void we need to assess what exactly constitutes a fair system of distribution. It would seem to make sense to me to consider establishing a minimum level of health care provision.

References

Freeman, D., Holderby-Fox, L. R., & Housepian, G. (2015). BEST PRACTICES AND COST CONTROLS: IMPROVING HEALTHCARE ACCESS THROUGH INNOVATION AND COMMUNICATION. Tennessee Journal Of Law & Policy, 10(3), 108-144.

Fuchs, V. (1996). Economicx, Values, and Health CAre Reform. Stanford University.

Fuchs, V., & Emaneul, E. (2005). Healrh Care Reform: Why? What? When? Project HOPE.

Vladeck, B., & Rice, T. (2009). Market failure and the failure of discourse: Facing up to the power of sellers. Health Affairs, 28(5), 1305–1315

Retrieved from the ProQuest Central database

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