Hello,
The issue I consider to be one of the most important to address in healthcare as regards
legislation and policy is the high cost of healthcare. With increasing insurance premiums and
increase in prices of pharmaceutical products, there is anxiety over getting quality healthcare
because majority of the population can no longer afford the cost of insurance premiums which
has left many without insurance and they no longer want to seek solution for their ailing
health because of the resulting bill. Progress is being made by Obama Care (Affordable Care
Act) in containing the cost of healthcare, but there is still more work to be done because
healthcare cost is still a major challenge. The cost of healthcare is increasing on a daily basis
and the "national health spending is projected to grow faster than the economy, increasing
from 18 percent of the economy to about 25 percent by 2037" (Seeberger C, et al, 2005)
One of the obstacles that needs to be addressed in order to reduce the cost of
healthcare is the use of fee-for-service payment also known as Volume Based Care -- in which
healthcare providers are reimbursed based on the number of patients they attend to rather than
the quality of care received by patients, and this creates financial incentives to maximize
volume for providers. Solution to this obstacle will be the use of episode of care also known
as Bundled Care and Global Payment as this will allow for flexibility and accountability by
providers in reducing cost and increasing quality of care
Another obstacle is the lack of alignment among payer which can be solved by
requiring physicians and providers to identify ways of providing higher quality of care at a
encouraged to support regional reforms and to opt for health care plans that support the
reforms. There is also lack of data for setting payment amount posing an obstacle to reducing
the cot of health care. The best solution to this obstacle will be to give providers access to
timely analyses of cost and its utilization through community multi-payer claims databases
Ofega.
References
Miller, H. D. (n.d.). Ten barriers to payment reform . chqpr.org. Retrieved December 5, 2021 from https://chqpr.org/downloads/OvercomingBarrierstoPaymentReform.pdf.
Seeberger C., et al (2005, December 21). Cutting health care costs. Center for American Progress. Retrieved December 5, 2021, from https://www.americanprogress.org/article/cutting-health-care-costs/.