¶ … HEALTHCARE Management. Allocation Health Care Resources From review readings week, provide a critique quality -- life surveys health care economic analysis determine allocation health care resources Issues in health care management

The healthcare sector is one of the more important ones within the American society, but it has recently proven unable to cope with all pressures. The economic crisis and the dramatic aging of the population pose additional threats on the healthcare system and raise new questions regarding the allocation of resources. At this level, a question is being posed relative to the appropriateness of using quality of life surveys and health care economic analysis to ensure the allocation of the health care resources. In order to answer this question, four specific issues have to be addressed, as follows:

The allocation for public and private health care services

The incremental and comprehensive reform

The ethical underpinnings of resource allocation, and last

The business opportunities for the development of health care providers.

1. Public and private health care

The public sector is allocated resources from the state budget alone. The private sector is allocated some of the resources from the state budget, but a large portion is also provided by private groups, such as employers or even individuals who pay...

The resources allocated within the public sector are generally insufficient and they run out even before they can actually reach the patient. In other words, the resources allocated to the public sector are used for the simple survival of the health care sector, without it being able to grow, develop and improve.
Within the private sector, the resources which are being allocated are used in a different manner. The private health care institutions are for profit agencies, which invest their money, rather than using it only for internal consumption and survival. The private institutions as such seek to generate a positive return on the resources they have invested. In such a context then, the resources which are allocated to the private sector are used in a more efficient and profitable manner.

This realization leads to the subsequent conclusion that more resources should be allocated to the private sector as this is better equipped to use them in a more suitable manner. It provides higher quality services for the patients and it also generates a return on the investments. Through these lenses then, the criterion to be used in the allocation of the resources is represented by the health care economic analysis, with emphasis on the costs and benefits of allocating the resources to various institutions (Douglas and Normand, 2005).

2. Incremental vs. comprehensive reform

In the setting of the problems currently faced by the American health care sector, the need for reforming the system is imperative. Still, the actual means to completing the reform is yet uncertain. On the one hand sits the possibility of implementing an incremental reform, whereas on the other hand sits the possibility of implementing a comprehensive reform.

The incremental reform strives to reduce the number of people without medical insurance and it would work towards this objective with various tools. It would for instance force employers above a certain size to offer their employees medical coverage; it would offer subsidies to the uninsured people or develop the Medicare and Medicaid programs. The comprehensive reform seeks to provide universal medical coverage to all people in the United States so that no single individual is uninsured. Efforts to attaining this objective would include personal mandates and subsidies, single payer proposals, or the voucher system.

The dispute over the two types of reforms is still ongoing. The incremental reform is virtually unable to provide medical coverage to all people, to reduce costs or to solve other problems in the health care system. Its only benefit is that it is politically viable. The comprehensive reform is less viable from a political standpoint and more complex from a processes standpoint (Fuchs and Emanuel, 2005). Nevertheless, it is the only hope to provide medical coverage for all the population and it is the…