HEALTH POLICY

United States Health Policy

United States Health Policy

Introduction

An effective health system must be public health oriented in order to eliminate the underlying causes of disease, thereby avoiding unnecessary costs and morbidity. Health promotion and disease prevention have a far greater impact on health status than do health care services. A health system's primary objective should be the improvement of the population's health. The policies of health (or health policies, or policies of public health) include all of the strategic choices of public and private authorities to improve the health status of populations under their responsibility: It aims at determining the areas and fields of intervention, clarifying objectives and make informed choices on priorities, and program resources to be committed to this level of responsibility. It must be recognized that the majority of expenditure in the health sector are predominantly devoted to the expenses of health care, mainly curative (Malhotra and Umang, 2010). Health policy analyst needs to consider the policy problems by employing the analysis of political and legal issues, because U.S. health policy is mainly influenced by these two key variables.

Discussion

Over the years, each presidential candidate in the election was committed to improving medical services and to reduce costs, but once they enter the White House, the reform would be for large pharmaceutical companies to prevent and, ultimately, their broad wealth and political decisions remain under the threat of influence. The role of congress in the development of health policy is significant since they are responsible for the development of policies in the areas of Medicare, Medicaid and National Institutes of Health. In addition, it is important to note that healthcare policy is essentially a bi-partisan policy; and as a result, the Congress comes across as the only adequate representative bi-partisan body that is eligible to develop such a policy ...