Challenges to the Healthcare Coverage for Children - Essay Example

"Challenges to the Healthcare Coverage for Children" is a remarkable example of a paper on the health system.
There are limitations to providing specialized healthcare coverage for children in the rural areas of the USA. The hospitals in rural areas have a low number of patients recorded daily, and thus it would be uneconomical for the interested groups and the government to handle the costs of operating a hospital with specialized facilities. It would thus be expensive to provide Cardiology, Neurology, Gastroenterology, Oncology, and Hematology facilities. These hospitals are thus exposed to the changes in the market and policies. Government programs like Medicaid and Medicare issue payment cuts for physicians in these areas.
            The rural population in America earns low incomes and most people are uninsured. Most of the specialized health facilities are expensive for uninsured citizens. The percentage of uninsured in rural areas is greater than in urban areas. Despite the fact that expanding the health coverage minimizes the child health care in rural areas, it will mean that rural hospitals make new investments. It is due to the possible rise in the patients visiting the hospitals. They may be covered under the Medicaid program of the state who pay less than the actual cost that the hospitals would incur running. It has a negative impact on the hospitals that operate at a loss.
            Setting up specialized facilities and specialized physicians in areas away from the metropolitan as proposed in the proposal would leave out the urban community which may likely be faced by the same set of problems regarding specialized child care. Rural areas have unique requirements and needs in terms of health care for children. The process may require that the physicians apply specialized treatment to these patients. It normally places an overburden to the hospitals that already have limited resources in terms of professional physicians and cannot afford the luxury of direct patient treatment.
            The challenge to the Emergency Medical Services Abuse Policy James Wilson
            A policy that seeks to punish the EMS abusers has its limitations. First, it is not easy to evaluate a patient and determine whether they are genuine or not. At times, the medical teams attending to an emergency situation may treat a real critically ill patient as an abuser and thereby putting their life at risk. The user may be a frequent user of the EMS, and this may be misinterpreted as an abuser and thus pose a penalty on a true emergency situation.
            Alcoholics account for about 4.3% of all the EMS abuse cases according to James. The medical teams may likely ignore a serious case of alcohol poisoning that may lead to the death of the patient. James recommended an electronic form of documentation to keep track of people using the services frequently. The process wastes a lot of time and it is extremely expensive since it requires extra skills from the team attending to an emergency situation. In addition to this, by implementing this policy that does not attend to alcoholics, the alcoholics are left out of the EMS system, and serious emergency cases by drunkards may be ignored.
            The strict protocols put by the paramedics' team attending to an emergency situation may scare away the public from reporting emergency cases. It is due to the fear that their cases may be assessed and concluded as a false alarm was thereby finding them. This policy is not a safe policy for ordinary citizens as one fault by the medics in terms of assessment may be fatal or result in unjustified fines. These fines add to the bills of the patients who already have the hospital bills to pay, and this seems like a double penalty regardless of whether the cases are real or not.