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Health policy

LaShanda Lewis

Strayer Univeristy

Pad

Nov 29, 2015

Question one

Health Policy is vitally important as it contains certain decisions, plans or actions which have been formulated with an aim of ensuring that health care goals are achieved in the society or the all nation. It enhances and promotes the health status of the community through other policies stipulated within itself such as vaccination policy and policy concerned with breast feeding promotion (Almgren, 2013). Through this policy, the vision of the future country as well as the entire world concerning the health of its people is achieved. It contains the outline of roles that different health personnel have to play in order to ensure that health duties are well executed.

Moreover, health policy is essential as it provides clarity when dealing with activities and issues that are critical to safety, health, regulatory requirements and legal liabilities. It also aids in making decisions concerning health care through the fundamental guidelines specified in the policy. The desired results of the organization pertaining health are also well communicated to the employees through the policy. It therefore ensures that, all the health personnel perform their duties with less supervision hence the quality of the health care services is tremendously improved. It also ensures that cost effective and safe quality health care is delivered (Afifi et al., 2013).

This policy is quite significant both in the country and globally as it ensures that health requirements of the total population are realized. This is well attained by ensuring that, obtainable resources for health are utilized. Consequently, every person in all places will have access to excellent health and as a result, they tend to live a healthier and long life (Almgren, 2013). This therefore is the actual aim of the health policy.

Question 2

Despite the fact that, health policy has the general goal of ensuring that there is provision of excellent health care, it also has its weaknesses. These weaknesses are very critical to health life of individuals and therefore I don’t recommend health policy to be put into action. For instance, the process of making the policy is impacted by influences and preferences of elected officials, interest groups and individual organizations. These people may be having competing and diverse interests hence making policy that suits those (Afifi et al., 2013).

. Furthermore, the process of making the health policy may experience conflicting proposals, values and demands from the players of the policy. These players experience political influences hence resulting to differing motives, conflicts and poor interrelationships. It therefore results to making of a policy that does not meet the health requirements of individuals. Moreover, significant costs may be incurred in the making of the policy and it is also time consuming (Almgren, 2013).

In addition, it is burdensome to set the policy and communicate it to employees. This results from continued increase of new requirements and regulations. It therefore makes it difficult for proper policy to be made and communicated to the workers efficiently (Afifi et al., 2013). It is also challenging to adhere to the new regulations or laws hence the health care services are not provided effectively.

Health policy may also result to disparities in a nation, for instance, the policy may not favor families receiving low incomes. This is because the policies stipulated within it may be expensive hence making the families to evade the health care that they need. Consequently, it may result to prolonged illness or death. As a result, it may end up costing more money to an individual’s family, taxpayers and government (Almgren, 2013).

Question Three

The health policy ensures that health care of individuals in a community or a country is achieved. This therefore means that the individuals will live a healthier and long life hence the levels of death rates in a country will be reduced. Policies stipulated within the policy ensures that possible diseases are prevented resulting to a health population. In addition, when the guidelines of the policy are provided, it becomes easier for the employees to apply them in the provision of health care hence the quality of services provided in the health sector will be of high quality (Afifi et al., 2013). When these duties are well executed, the image of the health care sector will be boosted hence attracting more clients.

Issues related to health are well clarified in the health policy. This ensures that, no errors are made in the implementation of the policy. Quick decisions will also be made concerning health care. Through this, a lot of time will be saved and most patients will be served at a time. Moreover, when the health care personnel perform their duties with less supervision, the interrelationships among the individuals in the health care sector will be improved. The result of this will be improvement in of provision of health services (Mason et al., 2014).

By ensuring that cost effective and safe quality health care is delivered, most individuals will be motivated to seek health care (Holtz, 2011). It will therefore result to a healthy population hence the country will be comprised of a productive population. Access to health care by all individuals will mean that, health policy has been enacted hence its aim will have been achieved. This will mean that, the population will be constituted of health people.

Question Four

The weaknesses that the health policy has are the challenges that make it not to be recommended for implementation. For instance, it is evident that the making of the policy may be biased due to players of the policy having competing and diverse interests. This is evidenced from the fact that, policy making is impacted by influences and preferences of elected officials, interest groups and individual or individual organizations (Mason et al., 2014).

The conflicting proposals, values and demands may result from individuals having varied views concerning the health policy. Moreover, the political influence affecting the making of the policy may result to poor health policy as most of the views will be politically oriented. This will therefore result to a policy that does not serve all the health needs of individuals. The incurrence of cost in policy making is caused by the amount put on research in an attempt to come up with strong health policy that meets the health requirements of the entire population (Holtz, 2011).

The difficulties experienced while trying to set the policy due to new requirements and regulations may be critical to a health sector. This majorly affects the employees since the health policy may not be made to guide their operations while serving in the health care sector (Mason et al., 2014). Consequently, proper and quality services may not be provided in the health care sector. Due to this, most diseases will not be curbed hence resulting to higher rates of diseases.

Disparities caused by the health care policy results to a gap between the rich and the poor in terms of acquisition of health care. This is because the policy may not be favoring the poor people as they will be required to adhere to the policy that does not meet the standards of their incomes. Illnesses and deaths resulting from this will therefore reduce the population of the people in the country (Almgren, 2013).

References

Afifi, A. A., Rice, T. H., Andersen, R. M., Rosenstock, L., & Kominski, G. F. (2013). Changing the u.s. health care system: Key issues in health services policy and management. San Francisco, Calif: Jossey-Bass.

Almgren, G. R. (2013). Health care politics, policy, and services: A social justice analysis.

Holtz, C. (2011). Global health care: Issues and policies. Sudbury, Mass: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.

Mason, D. J., In Gardner, D. B., In Outlaw, F. H., & In O'Grady, E. T. (2014). Policy & politics

in nursing and health care.