Health Care Reform Research Paper

Healthcare Economics

When considering the ever-changing and highly competitive economic landscape of the modern world; governments, businesses and institutions must remain diligent in their care and compassion for their citizens and staff members. With the current exponential growth and advancement of technology and the computerization of business and learning, voters, workers and consumers have become much more connected to the organizations they patronize (Kurzweil). Accordingly, these important groups are faced with the continuous task of finding new ways to understand and subsequently accommodate the needs of their followers, while simultaneously securing lucrative business models and job environments. One of the most important needs presented in all demographics is reliable healthcare. Thus, with the inelasticity in the demand for healthcare, countries need to determine an applicable system, whereby citizens can have access to the medical services they will inevitably need. Collective access to healthcare represents the main problem in field of healthcare for many nations (including The United States). Nevertheless, it is important to remember that the fuel to run an effective healthcare system comes in the form of money. Historically, citizens have been responsible for funding their own medical needs or even bartering with doctors for their services. However, in the modern world of American healthcare, the concept of insurance has come center stage. Health insurance allows the individual to pay only a small portion of the total amount of medical services they receive, yet they are continually paying monthly sums throughout their working lives. However, by introducing a massive amount of powerful and highly influential middle men (i.e. health insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies) the costs of healthcare increased at astonishing rates, because doctors needed to retain greater protections from costly lawsuits initiated by massive healthcare organizations. And as a result of America's privatization strategy in the arena of healthcare, the government's ability to effectively regulate this essential field has been significantly diminished. Additionally, extensive lobbying on behalf of insurance companies in justification of their monthly fees to their clients also caused prices to rise to such an extent that healthcare is now seemingly unaffordable without insurance .

From a macroeconomic perspective, the government is responsible for designing and subsequently implementing systems like the one outlined above. This is often referred to as the creation and integration of "health policy." This term specifically refers a structural framework that allows businesses, municipalities and even private citizens the opportunity to access health services . Due to the aforementioned inelasticity in demand for healthcare, the government is forced to concern itself more with assuring that healthcare is made available to all demographics, while putting expenditures aside. Keeping this in mind, it could be argued that the United States government has shirked some of its democratic and regulative responsibilities in this area by universally privatizing the healthcare insurance industry (unlike its European counterparts that have nationalized healthcare) and allowing private firms to determine a great deal of their own health insurance protocols. Though while it is often argued that actual healthcare services are superior in the United States, the health and pharmaceutical industries make up a much…