United States healthcare and politics intertwined

The state of the global population health-wise is that of increased chronic and widespread infectious diseases. This is a situation that has led to financial pressure on the United States primarily in the wake of the already strained health care systems. The government, however, makes a cost shift that affects the American people and sometimes lowers the salary of the medical workforce. The government and public policymakers are responsible for the making of hard decisions that make changes in the system. Hence, politics and most politicians do have a say to healthcare that is efficient and affordable to the Americans because they are outrightly enablers of any exploitive decision (Jacob & Skocpol, 2015).

Role of Politics in Health Policymaking

The most important reason behind Public health among medical practitioners and researchers, in general, is to find the causes and effects of diseases, deaths, and disabilities in human beings and bring an understanding of the same to the people. Challenges arises when the policymakers takes over and try to do their role of ensuring that all the knowledge is put into action for the benefit of the large, meaning that, researchers can only find solutions to health-related problems while politicians, on the other hand, implements the solutions or simply make them a reality, therefore, becoming the determiner of the most effective policies rather than by mean of proper analysis (Patel & Rushefsky, 2014).

The health policy process is subject to political, economic and also social forces. The health reforms, on the other hand, are mostly dependent on the economic prosperity and most especially on the mood of the current regime whether it is of the conservative nature or liberal one. It, therefore, becomes challenging for policymakers to implement government policies and it even becomes harder when they have to design them in a way that is appealing and resonates with political leaders and especially the constituencies to which they are set. There are usually two groups of government actors; those who get to set the agenda and formulate the policies and one that implements the same policies, yet most often than not, the responsibilities on how effective and efficient this health policies becomes entirely lies on the managers and analysts who are rarely protected from politics. It is usually interplay of many masters ranging from, the President, governors and other interest groups who build up the pressure.

Major US Health Policies

The ACA law passed under the Obama administration and echoed by Congress is one of the most effective reforms on American healthcare. The efforts to reform the health system dates back in 1935 and before. The ACA which was adopted in March 2010 is a continuation of a process that introduced Medicaid for the poor and Medicare for the elderly in 1965. The goals however are all connected in one way or another focusing on three main areas including; quality, access, and cost in health. Research shows that by the time ACA was being created, around 31.7 million people had not been insured for more than one year while 55.9 million people part of the same year. There existed conditions that limited people to access to healthcare including the canceling and inadequacy of insurances which Improved access dealt with (Marmor & Wendt, 2012)

The ACA also had a goal of curbing the healthcare costs which usually would increase annually by twice that of other developed countries and considered quality improvement which was a plea for many who felt quality had been compromised. It is argued that the health reform was initiated at a year (2009) that saw a high level of partisanship in the government that surpassed that of other years. This was so because there was a huge political difference between the elected Democrats and conservatives in Congress which required the majority party who were the Democrats to seriously negotiate and renegotiate on the same for the legislation of the ACA that required them to secure 60 out of the 100 seats. President Obama also played a role by encouraging Congress to take the lead, which they did and together with the house of representatives adopted the health-care bill (Marmor, 2017).

Personal Experience

The health insurance meant that families could enjoy subsided health care and also a relief to parents since they could add their children up to 26 years of age. This change enabled us also to receive quality services that were not compromised nor limited by costs.  It was most beneficial because of its ability to curb the out-of-pocket problems that we had been facing before. Businesses providing health care and that had more than 50 employees we requested to provide insurances in exchange of 35% of the tax credit, this meant that every household was guaranteed of sustainable coverages that saw all stakeholders benefit that is the government, health-care providers and us as the Americans. The ability of the ACA to prevent diseases before they occurred was impactful because we were able to save most of my family members who would have otherwise suffered death out of chronic diseases prevented (Patel & Rushefsky, 2014).

Conclusion

In conclusion, it seems rather difficult to generalize the American health-care because internationally it has been ranked as one of the best and yet with shortcomings. Politicizing of the health-care is one of the major challenges, and other difficulties would include lack of central health prices, prospective budgeting and lack of guaranteed insurance cover especially in the wake of repealing of the Obama care under Trump administration. Hence, in my opinion, a dialogue is needed and a consensus on the American health-care. This would be effective if Democrats and Republicans focused on providing problem-solving solutions to the Americans ahead of other interests.

References

Jacobs, L., & Skocpol, T. (2015). Health care reform and American politics: What everyone         needs to know. Oxford University Press.

Marmor, T. R. (2017). The politics of Medicare. Routledge.

Marmor, T., & Wendt, C. (2012). Conceptual frameworks for comparing healthcare politics and policy. Health policy, 107(1), 11-20.

Patel, K., & Rushefsky, M. E. (2014). Healthcare politics and policy in America. Public             Integrity, 17(1), 94-96.