Trends in Health Policy Essay - 1100 Words

Trends in Health Policy (Essay Sample) Content: Trends in Healthy Policy: Healthy Care PolicyNameInstitutionTrends in Health Policy: Health Care ReformHealthcare policies refer to a collection of strategic plans, decisions, and actions, carefully designed, analyzed and tailor made to meet health care objectives in a given society or nation. The policies define priorities and give reason to their relevance. Moreover, they provide a projection of providing precise measures of dealing with anticipated health concerns. Health care reform is a policy used to refer to critical and significant changes in health policies. The changes might involve the creation of more policies that enhance ease of access to medical facilities and services. Reforms tend to address the following issues among many; increase the general population covered by insurance, increase health care providers, facilitate ease of access to medical specialists and lower cost of health care. This paper shall cover on theoretical matters in health policy, l egal aspects in both health policies and reforms, ethical issues, and health policy implications for governmentsà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬ and citizens.Theoretical issues in health policy arise since there exists a gap between what was is planned and what is executed on the ground. Political interferences, especially in developing nations, are one of the leading causes of the differences. However, three model approaches have been prepared in evaluating health policy implementation; top-down theory, bottom-up theory, and principal-agent theory. In top-down theory, policies are formulated by senior persons in the society, usually the political class and passed down to subordinates for implementation. Certain conditions must exist for the theory to work; one major condition is execution of policies as formulated. However, the main challenge associated with the theory is that policies are never implemented as formulated. The bottom-down approach incorporates subordinates in policy making and implement ation. In this theory, subordinates opinions are considered in reshaping of policies and implementing. The principal-agent theory is more structured since it considers a relationship between decision-makers and those who implement the policies, (Buse, 2005). However, implementing policies involves three major steps; interpreting policies, establishing administrative units necessary to implement a strategic health policy and actual executive of service.Legal aspects must be considered in formulation of health policies, and health care reforms must. It is pieces of legislation that regulate the frequency of health policy formulation, the target group of the policies and supervision policy implementation. It is the law that determines the budget allocation for policy development or health care reforms. Persons involved in implementing the policies or changes must act within the legal framework established by the state. Pieces of legislation play a pivotal role in ensuring that health p olicies and health care reforms are sustainable and efficient. They create a framework that focuses on accountability, integrity, and upholding of professionalism. Legal aspects bring about equity in implementing the policies and health care; it ensures that marginalized and less privileged persons get medical services. Legal aspects regulate the scope of research, innovation, renovation, and development of health care reforms and policy formulation, (Banks, 2001).Legal concerns are neglected in a majority of health policy formulation and health care reforms. Legal aspects affect patients, policy formulators, health care reformists, health personnel and boost confidence levels in the society. Patients require privacy in their treatment; this is a legitimate concern that is of pivotal importance in health care. Exchange of patient health information among different health care providers, payments structures for patients, vendors, and health workers in institutions, reimbursement issu es, and data portability require some form of legal or regulatory framework. The importance of proper legal framework is also necessary for innovation, policy interpretation, implementation, clearance, and approval of policies, post-implementation activities, and commercialization of health policies or health care.Ethics is not a strange term in the health profession, a commitment to have a clientà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬s needs first, is one ethical principle. Some of the moral principles are contained in different cultures, oath of office, and such other documents contain ethics that guide health professionals. Ethical studies are incorporated into the curriculum studies of doctors and health workers. All practitioners in the medical health industry have a rich background in ethics when leaving school. However, the field of public health has received little attention in ethics; it is in the recent past that the area has received recognition in terms of formulating proper guidelines on standards . This is attributed to the fact that public health is concerned with issues beyond health care. It focuses on the economic and cultural practices of a given society; particular societies hold practices that inhibit the development of health policies. Such societies must be handled with care since they must be educated on the importance of health care before attending to them.Challenging questions have been raised due to the incorporation of ethical analysis to public health. For example, there is the question of what value is ethical analysis to public health? Are pieces of legislation subject to ethical scrutiny? Who decides on what values to protect, the order in which they should be prioritized in case of a dispute? How does ethical analysis provide a common ground between universal principles and values accepted by particular societies? These questions arise one ultimate question, what is the final benefit of incorporating ethics in health care reforms policies? Though there ex ists a series of challenges, ethics play a cooling ground for health workers and patients. It may seem to add little value to public health on the face value, but it is of great importance to all stakeholders, Morrow, (1995).Health policy and health care reforms implementation have a series of impacts to a government and society. Governments spend resources in public health; ranging from hiring of health expatriates who research on health issues, formulate proper policies and reform agendas and hiring workers who implement the policies. Moreover, more resources are spent on purchasing vehicles used by health wo...

The New South APUSH Topics to Master Before Test Day

Although the success of the ideology is questioned by historians, the idea of â€Å"The New South† was a way that southerners made sense of their defeat and their new place within the United States after the Civil War. But just how new was the New South? And what were the goals of this ideology? Keep reading to find out more about this important topic on the APUSH exam. What was the New South ideology? Henry Grady, an Atlanta journalist, is credited with coining the term â€Å"The New South† in his editorials. Instead of building a society that had at its foundation slavery and agriculture, â€Å"The new South presents a perfect democracya social system compact and closely knitted, less splendid on the surface, but stronger at the core; a hundred farms for every plantation, fifty homes for every palace; and a diversified industry that meets the complex needs of this complex age† (Grady, â€Å"The New South†). From this quote, it’s clear that Grady was responding to an idea that was popular at the time: the Confederacy lost the Civil War because it was too agrarian, too economically polarized (among whites), too old. The New South would rectify these problems, Grady believed (even though many historians debate the extent to which these were the actual problems of the Confederacy; I’ll speak more on that later). It may be most helpful to contrast the New South to the â€Å"Old South.† As will become apparent as you continue reading this post, the distinctions between New and Old may have been more of a marketing ploy or a rallying cry than substantive shifts in the political or economic realms of the former Confederacy. The Old SouthThe New South AgrarianIndustrial Plantations and concentrated wealthThriving middle class Authoritarian (white men not equal)Democratic (white men are equal) The New South ideology was an important force behind ending Presidential Reconstruction (Radical Reconstruction had already ended by this point) and bringing about the Compromise of 1877, which gave the presidency to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in exchange for removal of United States troops from the South. This effectively ended any legal protections African Americans had received after being emancipated. Was the New South ideology only about white men? Where were the women and the people of color? According to Grady, the New South would promote the same racial hierarchies that existed before the Civil War. As he stated in 1888, â€Å"the supremacy of the white race of the South must be maintained forever, and the domination of the negro race resisted at all points and at all hazards, because the white race is the superior race [This declaration] shall run forever with the blood that feeds Anglo-Saxon hearts† (Myrdal, p. 1354). Grady and other New South advocates were generally against Reconstruction, protesting what they viewed as Northern encroachment and exploitation by carpetbaggers. This ideology was supported by The Dunning School of historians, who portrayed southerners who opposed Reconstruction by violent means, such as the Ku Klux Klan, as â€Å"Redeemers.† In popular culture, this ideology was put on a national scale thanks to D.W. Griffith’s film â€Å"The Birth of a Nation,† a racist portrayal of Reconstruction. President Woodrow Wilson, praising the release of the Birth of Nation. Source here. Was The New South ideology successful? It depends on what part of the ideology you’re talking about. Economically, the idea of the New South didn’t come to fruition. The region remained largely rural, agrarian, and poor: by 1900, per capita income in the South was 40% less than the national income. This was largely because the system of sharecropping left much of the plantation-order in tact. And although the South did develop some textile mills, the majority of the wealth was concentrated in the hands of capitalists, not spread out among white workers to create a middle class. Child laborer, South Carolina. Source: Library of Congress. Socially, racial violence flourished. Lynchings and other forms of racial violence were routinized into the fabric of southern life, as was Jim Crow segregation. It’s important for you to remember that as much as the New South was about economic and political modernization, those espousing this ideology had no intention of erasing the racial hierarchy that had been set by slavery. Anti-lynching banner flew outside NAACP headquarters in midtown Manhattan from the early 1900s until 1938. Source here. Furthermore, the New South ideology was remedying issues that may not have been the Confederacy’s true weakness. As historians have made clear, the Southern economy prior to the Civil War was the foundation of capitalism as it existed in the rest of the country and the world. Rather than being set in traditional, agrarian ways, under this interpretation, Southern plantation owners were capitalists in much the same way as Northern industrialists (see The Half has Never Been Told by Edward Baptist and The Vast Southern Empire by Matthew Karp). What kinds of questions will I be asked on the APUSH exam about the New South? Use the political cartoon below to answer the following multiple choice questions. Source: Library of Congress. 1. The political cartoon above best supports an ideology that A. Promotes women working outside of the home. B. Believes in industrializing the South. C. Urges a return to the economic policies of 1861. D. Teaches young women how to work machinery. 2. The man in the upper left of the political cartoon most likely represents A. Wealthy plantation owners in the Old South. B. British royalty at the time. C. Cotton, the chief cash commodity in 1861. D. Northern aristocrats coming into the South to make a profit. Correct Answers: 1. B 2. A