HEALTHCARE AS AN ESSENTIAL PUBLIC POLICY

BY RITIKA TYAGI

INTRODUCTION

Public policy is the actions taken by the government and the goals that influence those actions. Public policies affect individuals in many ways, ranging from health, economic, environmental, and educational factors. Health care is seen as an essential public policy. Health care is evaluated or assessed on the aspects of publicly provided health care to the citizens of a given country. The welfare herein comprises both curative and preventive measures, both of which are tailored towards achieving the set policies that concern the general public.

THE SCOPE AND NATURE

The issue of health care affects everyone, ranging from families worrying about their children to government officials being worried about the increasing cost of health care. Workers, doctors, and hospitals are also concerned with the responsibility of delivering proper health care. The value of Health care services determines the welfare state associated with them. Health care policy is considered a public policy since it is by greater extent provided by the government through the relevant agencies due to the externalities associated with it, if it is provided through the normal market model.

It is therefore non-rival and non-excludable from any individual in the population. Most of these services are mostly offered for free or at highly subsidised prices by the government. The welfare associated with the provision of medical care and services constitute a public policy problem in this concept. An attempt to value public goods is more or less complex, and consequently requires special treatment of variables considered.

Public Policy Evolution

Health care policy formulation and implementation has been characterised by government’s interests since the mid-1970s. These concerns were tailored by the objective of the governments to improve the welfare of the larger population in a country. Health care systems have been viewed as primary legal and objective tools that effectively communicate needs and achievements of both the government and the population for whom these policies are meant to serve.

Conclusion

It is evident from the above discussion and concepts that investment in health is expensive. In this regard, increasing expenditures are directly proportional to the life satisfaction of the general public. However, differences across the population groups are evident, with the willingness to pay or invest in health varying across the groups.

These differences occur due to the fact that the willingness to pay for publicly provided private services like health is mainly non-monotonic in the level of income of the population. In this regard, it is evident that devotion of monetary resources to public service and provision of health care is positively related to the well being of the population.