Health Care and Government Policy, Research Paper Example

There are pros and cons to government policy changes in healthcare as there are pros and cons to anything else. The Christian Science Monitor reports on the pros and cons of the new government healthcare bill, and states the bill broadens benefits initially but decreases them further down the line. With this new bill, the federal government commits to allocating funding in the budget through the year 2019 (positive); however, the next decade would see cuts in the funding (negative).

An example of a positive outcome of the new bill is an increased reduction in the federal deficit and increased health care coverage in the country by 32 million people (Marron, 2010). There are so many people in this country who are without any type of health coverage and are not able to get it because they fall between the brackets of not being poor enough to get state health insurance and being too poor to afford private insurance. An additional benefit for reforming health care, to include more people’s coverage, is the reduction of costs due to emergency room visits and the cost of care for otherwise preventable diseases and conditions that would decrease if people had insurance for preventive health care (Health Affairs, 2009).

An example of a negative outcome of the new bill pertains to the plan of combining federal health care spending with federal tax subsidies. Marron (2010), points out tax subsidies are somewhat equivalent to spending, so to increase federal health care spending but decrease tax subsidies equally would mean that the federal government’s funding commitment to health care would not really increase. It just seems like the federal government would be robbing Peter to pay Paul from one decade to the next. Marron (2010) states “In subsequent years, the effects of the provisions of the two bills combined that would tend to decrease the federal budgetary commitment to health care would grow faster than the effects of the provisions that would increase it.” So, the question is would the country benefit in the long-run with proposed changes in the healthcare system or not?

References

Health Affairs. (2009). Key Issues in Health Reform. Health Policy Briefs. Retrieved from http://www.healthaffairs.org/healthpolicybriefs/brief.php?brief_id=10

Marron, D. (2010). New healthcare bill pros and cons: It expands benefits now, cuts them later. The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved from http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/Donald-Marron/2010/0322/New-healthcare-bill-pros-and-cons-It-expands-benefits-now-cuts-them-later