Week 4: Healthcare Policy System Flashcards
What are the 3 goals of policy competence?
Abilities to analyze the impact of public policies on one’s domain of interest or responsibility and exert influence in the public policymaking process
Understand the policymaking process as a decision-making
process
Understand a particular type of decision making include
context, participants, and processes.
Who can health policies affect?
Health policy can have an impact on specific groups or classes of
people, such as physicians, the impoverished, the elderly, and
children
Organizations of different types or categories, such as medical
schools, HMOs, nursing homes, pharmaceutical manufacturers,
and employers
What is an HMO?
Health Maintenance Organization is an insurance
structure that provides coverage through a network of physicians
What are the 5 principle features of the health policies system?
Government, Subdivisions, and Private Sector
Fragmented, incremental, piece-meal reform
Pluralistic and special interest group politics
Decentralized role for the states
Impacted by presidential leadership
What is one detail about the healthcare system?
Mix of government and private insurance give rise to a complex and fragmented system of health care system
What are 4 details about financing?
Employed are insured by voluntary insurance through employee and employer contributions
Elderly are financed through Social Security tax revenues
The poor are insured through federal, state, and local revenue.
Special populations (Veterans, Native Americans) insured directly by the federal government
What is the effect of pluralistic and special interest group politics on the healthcare policies system?
Role of interest groups and incremental policies result from
compromises designed to satisfy demands of:
Interest groups (e.g., AMA, AARP, AHA) American Medical
Association, American Association of Retired Persons, American Hospital Association
Employers
Consumer groups
Manufacturers of Technology
Alliances (diverse interest groups form alliances among themselves members of legislative body)
What are some of the powers related to the decentralized role of the states in the health policies system?
Most incremental policy actions originate at the state level
State finances much of the healthcare for the poor and disabled (e.g., Medicaid, SCHIP) State Children’s Health Insurance Program
Quality assurance & oversight of health care practitioners and
facilities
Regulate health care costs and insurance carriers
Health personnel training
Authorization of local government health services
What is the impact of presidential leadership? Give 3 examples.
Presidential leadership can lead for major changes in health
policies
Presidents can influence outcomes through compromise
Examples:
President Lyndon B. Johnson help pass Medicare & Medicaid
President Harry Truman helped pass the Hill-Burton Hospital
Construction Act
President Barack Obama helped pass the Affordable Care Act
What is health policy?
What forms does health policy take?
Compare and contrast the 2 basic categories of health policies.
Discuss the connection between health policies, health
determination, and health
