Healthcare Policy Implementation

Introduction

There has been heated debate on policy implementation in health sector in the U.S.A concerning healthcare policy. The debate s have been over the ways and procedures the Federal Government of the USA will use to make healthcare policy implementation effective. The Obama administration has been in the frontline in implementing the healthcare policy. It has experimented a lot of challenges to make this policy efficient and effective.

The USA is one of the best countries which are known for careful and efficient policies implementation in different sectors. Due to global economic crisis the USA has failed to implement some policies such as healthcare policy and other financial bills due to high capital requirement for implementation (Duffin, 1999).

Healthcare sector is one of the most challenging sectors in the USA and needs proper guidelines in developing a healthcare policy, determine the ways of analyzing and evaluating it before implementing the policy. This is because the healthcare sector has a great impact on the USA citizens. Most of the citizents’ income is taxed for the purpose of contributing to make healthcare services effective. There has been initiated a debate between the Democrats and the Republicans on ways in which people or citizens from both private and public sectors should contribute to and benefit from this policy (Kraus, 2006).

If the policy becomes implemented ,it will make a significant impact not only on the USA citizens but also on the whole world because it will reduce the cost of health treatment in the USA and give an example to other countries to follow when providing their citizens with the everlasting solutions on health matters. One of the impacts of this policy on the USA citizens will be high and quality services of health centers as the Federal Government will develop regulations and rules to make sure that every citizen gets a chance to access the healthcare services even if he/she is not able to pay for the treatment

As we analyze and evaluate this policy , we are going to focus on a long term healthcare reform and provide some alternatives. We will base our research on number of issues such as financial requirements, coordination between the Federal Government, public and private sector in raising the policy awareness of the USA citizens on the importance and usefulness of the healthcare reform and rates at which citizens’ income should be taxed to contribute to the healthcare services (Jui-Fen, 2003).

In our policy proposal, we will focus on identifying the problem associated with policy implementation, define the problem and analyze it in a wider and broader way in order to detect and to solve the problem that might arise in the process of policy implementation. By developing an evaluation system of each of the alternatives, we will provide the best ways to make this policy achievable.

As we begin this policy proposal, we will define the policy maker’s face. We analyze it carefully to make the problem understandable. It will help us to have a good foundation to introduce is well-researched, evaluated and implemented proposal which will provide the best positive result to the USA citizens and the world in general. It will also set an example to other countries to come up with the same policies to provide healthcare services accessible to each citizen.

Statement of Problem

Due to global economic crises, many economy makers have failed to provide a suitable healthcare policy that will help to implement the proposed healthcare policy. Some of the problems that we identified as a policy maker is finance requirement private and public sectors which will be given the mandate to provide the services, the taxes that USA citizens should be levied on, social impacts of the policy to the USA citizens and world in general, reducing high cost of accessing healthcare and finally reducing government debts and deficits in the process of providing this services.

Financial Requirements

Healthcare policy is one of the most sensitive and demanding policies which require a lot of capital so as to implement it. In most cases it demands the government of USA to set aside some huge amount of money for this sector. Due to economic crises, it not easy for the Federal Government to provide such a huge amount of money for healthcare sector. Financial requirements is a big challenge in implementation of this policy because the federal government in the USA is impacted by many social and political activities such as wars which requires serious expenditure on the defense, hence making it impossible to provide enough funds for the health sector .

It is believed  hat the Federal Government of the USA face a major challenges in allocation of funds to different sectors because its expenditure is more than the revenue..

Policy Alternative for Financial Problem

Since we have identified that it requires a huge amount of money to make healthcare policy effective, we have come up with some alternatives that should be considered in order for the government to be able to provide the required capital to the healthcare sector. One of the alternatives is to allocate a large percentage of funds for heath care and cut some of the expenses so that it made possible to implement the policy.

Another alternative to the financial issue is that the government should impose high tax rate on goods and services which are not very profitable and the funds collected should be directed towards heath care. International finance may be another alternative that the Federal Government should seek so as to obtain financial support from World Bank and other financial institutions for financial aid to assist them to implement heath care policy without taking loans from external and internal financial institutions.

Problem of high cost

High cost in accessing healthcare facilities in the USA by its citizens has been a subject of discussion on many forums. In the past years, not all citizens are able to access these fundamental facilities in the USA because of either low income or unemployment. The problem has a great impact on the implementation of the healthcare policy since if the problem is not well-analyzed and well-resolved, it will also cause crises of the heath care providers and contributors. We propose that the best way to minimize the heath care cost is to make the government subside the heath care by lowering the cost of receiving health services and increase the price of more consumed goods so that the funds raised were used to lower the cost of these services.

Other Alternative of High Cost

Other alternative to high cost of accessing healthcare reduction is the following: the government should come with ways of promoting manufacturing industries that produce medicine and other health facilities so that the cost of producing this facilities is cheaper, hence making it possible to all citizens to access the services at low cost.

The Rate of Income Tax to be Imposed by the Federal Government is a Problem

The rate at which the government imposes income on the contribution to heath care is a major challenge. This is because the government has failed to come up with an income tax structure that will ensure that all citizens pay taxes without complaints and the tax paid should not have greater impact on the citizens. This has been a major concern of many USA politicians and citizens because they feel that the tax they pay for these services is too high and, hence, the disposable income is too low making the cost of living high. The government should set up taxes which will be neutral to both the high income earners and low income earners.

The Problem with Government Debit Ad Deficit

The Federal Government of the USA has been spending more on various activities what created deficit. This is because sometimes the country borrows when it realizes a deficit from both internal and external financial institutions. This has a great impact on healthcare policy implementation because it spends a lot of money on paying the loans at high interest, hence it is not possible to allocate enough money for other sectors including healthcare (Hughes, 2007). To avoid deficit and high rate of borrowing the Federal Government should design a balanced budget and put aside some funds in case of the deficit that may occur. It is easier to receive funds from other sources.

Other Alternatives to Government Debits and Deficits

The Federal Government should introduce a treasury bills in case of deficit in the budget .Treasury bills are financial securities which the government sells to the public in order to obtain money in return t o fund various policies where healthcare sector should be included .

The above four major problems have become an obstacle towards implementation of healthcare services to the public .We have analyzed the best alternatives that should be taken care of to have healthcare policy successfully implemented. We have evaluated each problem and we have provided the alternative to consider when implementing the above policy to make sure its efficient and effective for the USA citizens and for the entire world (Borger, 2006). Our analyses shows that if the problems we identified are well resolved as we indicated then the proposed healthcare policy will be successful

Policy Technique to be Used

After identifying the critical issues that hinder the progress of healthcare policy in the United States of America , it is important to find out the policy technique that we should consider. To make sure that healthcare policy is well implemented .some of this techniques include;

1.  Scanning the general environment .This technique is important because the environment changes due to the implementation of the policy. We should find out what will be the consequences of the healthcare policy to the general public. Another issue is think what will be the negative consequences that might arise when the policy is at work and what are the best solution to those problems in case they arise.

Scanning enables policy developers to be aware of what is ahead and look at all available alternatives to make sure that all the required knowledge for the policy analysis was carefully was used, evaluating it with great concern , formulating the ideas and finally implementing the policy .

1.  Another managerial technique that we must make use is to determine the type of a goal or objective settlers which are engaged to make it successful .This is because we have two types of goal settlers and if selected incorrectly, we may end up with managerial problems which may hinder the policy implementation process. In this case, if we use parochial goal settlers we may fail to implement the set policies because managers are not conscious when doing research before taking any action during policy implementation.

We should use adoptive goal settlers because the managers will set their own objectives within specific guidelines. They take advantage of opportunities and develop new ways of doing things as long as they will be successful. In our case, this will help to employ adaptive goals settlers to monitor and implement goals or policies of healthcare for them to become fully operational.

Conclusion

Healthcare policy is a very sensitive policy which requires coordination from both parties either in the Federal Government or in private or public sector. This is because from the 19^th century; healthcare policy has not been successful because of poor policy implementation .This calls for all sectors in the United States of America to come together and work as a unit to ensure that all citizens are able to access the healthcare with minimal problems. Healthcare sector needs a lot of materials for it to operate effectively and it’s up to the Federal Government to come up with ways of implementing our proposals the policy.

The above policy has several challenges to the US Federal Government such as high cost of capita requirement. The government has no other option to adopt a balance budget to set aside enough funds to cater for arising needs. Well trained managers with vision should be employed to make a research how to make the policy successful. And more so the Federal Government should avoid taxing its citizens more towards the heath care services but look for proposed ways that we have given above to get funds towards these services.