New Payment Methods in Health System and Quality of Care
Introduction
For the purpose of this article I will make some generalizations and I will define some words to facilitate the reading and understanding. These definitions are not intended to be exhaustive and must be understood only in the context of this article.
In America health has had its own evolution, passing from the personal relationship between a physician and a patient to a complex system with many actors. As technology developed, on one hand, the costs increased and patients or their families weren’t able to pay by themselves. As a consequence, new payers, such as Government and employers appeared in the health industry. But once again, one treatment could be so expensive, that the resources of a small employer wouldn’t be enough to cover it, and his business could get in financial risk. Consequently, the typical insurers began to play their own role: The affiliation of large number of people paying a fixed premium per person and period of time, regardless the cost of the treatments needed by each of their affiliates. A patient could choose the provider, pay the treatment by itself, and later the insurer reimbursed him the cost of it. If the number of affiliates is high, the probability of a high cost treatment becomes more standard or predictable and the excess of money the insurer earns with people who pay and don’t get sick can absorb its costs. This is known as the “big numbers” law.
On the other hand, physicians became more specialized, and needed more technology not affordable on an individual basis. Now we have physicians, nurses, hospices, clinics, hospitals and complex systems joining all them in order to provide the care needed by patients. For the purpose of this article I’ll call all of them providers.
Cost continued increasing, the relations between these actors continued changing, and the characteristics of each of them too. In the side of the insurers, in the 1980’s, the Health Maintenance Organizations or HMO’s appeared. Despite their differences, in the beginning most had similar characteristics: they were non-profit organizations providing care to their affiliates with a selected net of providers and special rules and procedures that patients and providers should follow in order to accept the service and pay the provider.
Recently, in the search to achieve the key objective of cost containment, the
The concepts discussed within the article regarding medicalization and changes within the field of medicine served to be new knowledge for me as the article addressed multiple different aspects regarding the growth of medicalization from a sociological standpoint. Furthermore, the article “The Shifting Engines of Medicalization” discussed the significant changes regarding medicalization that have evolved and are evidently practiced within the contemporary society today. For instance, changes have occurred within health policies, corporatized medicine, clinical freedom, authority and sovereignty exercised by physicians has reduced as other factors began to grow that gained importance within medical care (Conrad 4). Moreover, the article emphasized
Mohandas Gandhi was a non-violent promoter for Indian independence.He was married young at 13,and went to London to go to law school.Gandhi got his degree there and was on his way to being a lawyer.He went to his first case,but couldn't even speak. Gandhi then got invited to South Africa from a businessman. Gandhi’s luck their was no good either.European racism came to him,after he got kicked off of a train,because he was “colored” and was holding a first class ticket.When Gandhi fought back because of it,was arrested and was sent to jail.After this, he became know as as a leader.Gandhi returned to India in 1896,and he was disgusted by it.British wanted them to wear their clothes,copy their manners,accept their standards of beauty,but Gandhi refused.Gandhi wanted people to live free of all class and wealth.Gandhi tried so hard and was more successful then any other man in India.They won independence in 1947. Gandhi’s non-violent movement worked because,Gandhi used clever planning, mass appeal, conviction, and compassion to win independence for India.
The British Petroleum (BP) oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was one of the worst ecological catastrophes in human history, causing vast damage to a fragile and beautiful ecosystem while at the same time calling attention to the deficits in current approaches to energy prospecting, risk management, and cleanup. This analysis of the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill will devote attention to the following questions: (a) What kind of technology is in use for deep-sea oil extraction, what are the factors that accounted for the BP catastrophe, what were the statistical components of the spill in terms of volume and concentration, and what was the spatio-temporal scale of the oil spill? (b) What were the environmental (physical, biological, hydrological, and atmospheric) impacts of the oil spill, in addition to the economic and social impacts? (c) What were the scientific, technological, and policy solutions implemented by various actors to pursue the cleanup of coastal areas, wildlife, and wetlands damaged by the oil spill? (d) What is the feasibility of long-term biodiversity conservation measures and the limits of such solutions?
Oil provides us with many necessities in our lives. Cosmetics, medicines, cleaning products, asphalt, food, plastic, and most importantly, petroleum. But of course, nothing comes without a price. The oil that makes our lives so much more convenient, is also ironically gradually killing the environment, this very Earth that we live in. One of the biggest environmental concerns come from oil spills. Oil spill is defined as “ the release of a liquid petroleum hydrocarbon into the environment, especially marine areas, due to human activity, and is a form of pollution.” Let’s look at some examples of these oil spills.
Solomon, G., & Janssen, S. (2010). Health effects of the gulf oil spill. JAMA, 304(10), 1118-1119. doi: 10.1001/jama.2010.1254
Health Maintenance Organizations, or HMO’s, are a very important part of the American health care system. Also referred to as managed care programs, HMO's are combinations of doctors and insurance companies that are formed into one organization. This organization provides treatment to its members at fixed costs and decides on what treatment, if any, will be given based on the patient's or doctor's current health plan. Sometimes, no treatment is given at all. HMO's main concerns are to control costs and supposedly provide the best possible treatment to their patients. But it seems to the naked eye that instead their main goal is to get more people enrolled so that they can maintain or raise current premiums paid by consumers using their service. For HMO's, profit comes first- not patients' lives.
The number of doctors that present in the United States of America directly affects the communities that these doctors serve and plays a large role in how the country and its citizens approach health care. The United States experienced a physician surplus in the 1980s, and was affected in several ways after this. However, many experts today have said that there is currently a shortage of physicians in the United States, or, at the very least, that there will be a shortage in the near future. The nation-wide statuses of a physician surplus or shortage have many implications, some of which are quite detrimental to society. However, there are certain remedies that can be implemented in order to attempt to rectify the problems, or alleviate some of their symptoms.
Globalization has caused the world to change. Our country, China has been dramatically changed by globalization. Our people have moved to cities, and our industry has exploded. We have had huge advances in technology along with education improvement. Despite the fact that China has changed so much, there are still many issues that plague it. China faces serious environmental concerns. New diseases and viruses that are not indigenous to China can cause a wide range of sickness in the new area. Despite some of the the improvements in China that are a result of globalization, the negatives that globalization has brought to China are more than the benefits.
Did you know that hunters pay $796 million a year in conservation programs? Sportsmen are a huge source of revenue in the United States. Also, hunters requested an eleven percent tax on guns, ammo, and archery equipment. All these sources of income add up to a total of $1.6 billion a year. If that money was cut out of the economy it would hurt it a lot more than the people fighting against hunting would ever realize. In this paper, the goal is to inform people why sports like hunting and trapping are needed to keep the world going. Not just financially but also to keep a balance between the types of wildlife.
Society has long since considered women the lessor gender and one of the most highly debated topics in society through the years has been that of women’s equality. The debates began over the meaning between a man and woman’s morality and a woman’s rights and obligations in society. After the 19th Amendment was sanctioned around 1920, the ball started rolling on women’s suffrage. Modern times have brought about the union of these causes, but due to the differences between the genetic makeup and socio demographics, the battle over women’s equality issue still continues to exist. While men have always held the covenant role of the dominant sex, it was only since the end of the 19th century that the movement for women’s equality and the entitlement of women have become more prevalent. “The general consensus at the time was that men were more capable of dealing with the competitive work world they now found themselves thrust into. Women, it was assumed, were unable to handle the pressures outside of the home. They couldn’t vote, were discourages from working, and were excluded from politics. Their duty to society was raising moral children, passing on the values that were unjustly thrust upon them as society began to modernize” (America’s Job Exchange, 2013). Although there have been many improvements in the changes of women’s equality towards the lives of women’s freedom and rights in society, some liberals believe that women have a journey to go before they receive total equality. After WWII, women continued to progress in there crusade towards receiving equality in many areas such as pay and education, discrimination in employment, reproductive rights and later was followed by not only white women but women from other nationalities ...
Hunting can be considered the practice of trapping or killing animals, or pursuing them with the intention of either trapping or killing them. Although this practice was a vital part of the survival of humans 100,000 years ago, it is now considered a violent form of recreation that a majority of hunters do not require for subsistence (National Research Council, 1995). This is because it has contributed heavily to the endangerment, extinction and extirpation of animal species globally. Less than 5% of the population which accounts to 13.7 million people in the United States hunts animals, yet hunting is allowed in numerous national forests, state parks, wildlife refuges and other public lands (U.S. Fish and Wildfire Service, 2012). Nearly 40%
The Gulf of Mexico oil spill has had an extremely negative effect on the surrounding wildlife and ecosystem. The oil spread across the gulf contaminating any living organism that came into direct or indirect contact with it. The oil cuts off the ability of oxygen from the air to move into the water which directly harms fish and other marine wildlife that require that oxygen. The dispersant that the BP is using to try and break up the oil moves the slick into the entire water column which contaminates the ocean floor which would most likely not have seen any damage if it wasn’t for the use of these dispersants. More than 400 species that live in the Gulf Islands and marshlands are at risk and as of November 2 s...
The United States health care system is one of the most expensive systems in the world yet it is known as being unorganized and chaotic in comparison to other countries (Barton, 2010). This factor is attributed to numerous characteristics that define what the U.S. system is comprised of. Two of the major indications are imperfect market conditions and the demand for new technology (Barton, 2010). The health care system has been described as a free market in
The April 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will forever change the way Americans view deepwater oil drilling. No one could have foreseen that BP’s well would spew into the Gulf waters for over 80 days before it was successfully capped. Over the years, many articles have been written about the disaster, and many different viewpoints given in the articles. This essay discusses the oil spill’s effect on Gulf coast animal and plant life, plus whether the government is implementing effective legislation regarding the spill.
The binomial theorem, according to both Haggard et al and Dhand in his lecture (n.d.), is a way of presenting in an equation the expansion of a power of a binomial (x+y)^n but with all the terms; both numerical and literal coefficients are added. The theorem states: