Who Pays for Health Systems - Essay Example

"Who Pays for Health Systems?" is an outstanding example of a paper on the health system. Demand and supply determine pricing in healthcare just like in a market environment. It is the role of the government to ensure that all people have access to affordable healthcare (World Health Organization 2000, p.103). The elderly and children need affordable healthcare and health insurance coverage because they are prone to chronic infections such as obesity, diabetes, and hypertension (Merson 2006, p.835). Basic healthcare would also benefit mothers in terms of family planning, and awareness about self-breast examination for early detection and treatment of breast cancer. Secondary and tertiary healthcare is the prerogative of an individual and would be influenced by the quality of care as well as personal preferences (Merson 2006, p.835). It would be impractical for a government to finance secondary and tertiary care. At least, the government will intervene in health issues that are considered basic. This paper, therefore, provides a critical evaluation of how increased competition and market forms create encouragements to use resources efficiently and increase the quality of healthcare services provided.

The competition focuses on regulating prices as in the case of markets that are regulated by managed care and creates encouragements to limit resource use and create incentives to improve efficiency, (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2015). Apart from feasible increases in managerial activities intended to control costs in areas of utilization review and billing or to increase marketing, such cost-cutting initiatives are apt to influence all aspects of hospital operations. In many cases, hospitals compete on quality, which are qualities of medical services and hotel amenities. For instance, private hospitals tend to be more competitive than public hospitals. Although they may be expensive, they provide healthcare that is more specialized.  The significance of competition for quality is stiffer in markets where hospitals directly compete for patients such as is the case for fee-for-service patients as well as patients enrolled in HMOs (Powers 2012, p.19). The rationale behind this competition is to provide the best healthcare to patients and to match cost with the level service. This also improves the quality of healthcare.

  Quality of perceptions then becomes a significant competitive tool. Unlike price competitions, competition for quality oftentimes leads to increased costs. It could also affect hotel and clinical services differently (Powers 2012, p.46). Where a patient’s preference of hospitals is increasingly significant, hospitals will likely compete on quality aspects that patients value and observe. In light of the difficulties that patients have about deciding on the quality of healthcare received as well as the convenience with which they assess the quality of hotel services, hospitals are left with no choice, but to shift resources to amenities (Akatwijuka & Propper 2013, p.122).

In conclusion, the choices made by hospitals about resource allocation rely on the comparative strengths of the opposing views. As such, it is the prerogative of the government to initiate better health policies, which target the poor and vulnerable members of society. This is because hospitals face challenges of counter encouragements, which would motivate the use of resources in a health care unit rather than in hotel services if patients depend on the physician’s choice of a hospital and the extent to which the physician assesses clinical quality. Therefore, hospitals might face challenging proposals to enhance or maintain the quality of hotel services as well as the quality of healthcare and health results.

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