Government Intervention In Health Care

As long as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness has been an expectation of American citizens, good health to support these pursuits has also been desired. A country built upon freedom of choice, our government for many years had a distant role in truly controlling health care access and health care costs. Today with rising healthcare costs, an aging workforce, and technology driven medicine, the government is required to integrate regulations and limitations to assure affordable health care for future citizens. Without government intervention, the future of health care for upcoming citizens is in grave danger.

Citizens in our country, who have devoted their lives to working and depositing funds into the Medicare system, are beginning

Treating quickly is not enough; we must also treat effectively. Assuring the patient has the medication education needed before leaving a provider can help assure compliance with life saving medications. Developing clinical guidelines to guarantee consistency nationwide in treating patients is beneficial to avoid costly and unnecessary procedures. When hospitalized, we should utilize multi-disciplinary teams to assure every aspect of the patient’s condition is evaluated and accurately treated. Patients with multiple co-morbidity concerns are often treated with focus on the one exacerbated condition, in an effort to discharge quickly, rather than focusing on the entire health of the patient. Data from a 2012 Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) study revealed over 3 million possible unsubstantiated hospitalizations in discharge records of patients with multiple co-morbidity factors With the mean cost of discharge approximately $8,000 and 63% of these hospitalizations being covered by Medicare, the cost to the nation is staggering(Skinner, 2016). My proposal to Congress involves incentivizing hospitals to be rigorous in implementing multidisciplinary care plans with measurable outcome improvements tied to financial bonuses for the health

As many of the general public in the United States live in rural areas, access to health care is often limited. Rural areas most often are populated by the underprivileged and impoverished and, consequently, these individuals go for long periods with lack of appropriate health care. Accordingly, chronic health conditions are often ignored, resulting in life threatening and costly disease exacerbations. As access to health care is fundamental in maintaining health, it is imperative we that we incentivize practitioners to practice in these rural areas (Ziller,