Affordable Care Act: Issues Affecting Healthcare Policymaking and Implementation

Introduction

There are various issues that are associated with healthcare policy-making and implementation in the United States. Some of the challenges experienced in the process are opposition from key stakeholders, poor coordination of policies, poor communication on the policy, and lack of enough funding for data collection (Phillips et al., 2023). During the development and implementation phase, the health policy might face opposition from key stakeholders. Public health policies require a multi-sectoral approach that combines intelligence and input from various groups of people. For example, a healthcare policy can be supported by other politicians and can be opposed by others.

Poor Coordination of Policies

The second potential issue that might arise in health policy development and implementation is poor coordination of policies. Poor policy duplication results in the scrambling for scarce resources. The duty of policy implementation lies solely on government actors and not the people who designed the policy. Other times, policy implementers might not understand the perspectives of the designers. Thus, the policy implementation process requires the input of policy designers and implementers in policy objectives communication, ensuring that there are enough resources to implement policies, achieve ownership of the policy, manage conflicts ensure cooperation and sustain policy change (Phillips et al., 2023).

Poor Communication of Policy

Health policymaking is faced with the issue of poor communication of policy. Other times, healthcare policies can be formulated due to political pressure to achieve what was promised during the campaign period. This can lead to a lack of clarity in the services covered in the policy, the policy implementation process, and the policy funding. Due to poor communication, the policy can face rejection from healthcare providers who do not have knowledge of what is expected from them in policy implementation (Hudson et al., 2019). Additionally, with poor communication, the health policy might fail to understand other underlying factors such as the capacity of the healthcare system to implement the policy, training of healthcare providers on the policy changes, and the shortage of healthcare providers that might affect policy implementation.

Funding and Sustainability

Other times, the health policy formulation process might be rushed, and enough data on policy formulation not be collected. This has made the policies less sustainable due to their inability to meet the needs of the population (Hudson et al., 2019). Additionally, lack of funding for formulating policies may make it difficult for it to run appropriately in the healthcare system and healthcare organizations.

References

• Phillips, K. A., Marshall, D. A., Adler, L., Figueroa, J., Haeder, S. F., Hamad, R., & Nikpay, S. (2023). Ten health policy challenges for the next 10 years. Health Affairs Scholar, 1(1), qxad010. https://academic.oup.com/healthaffairsscholar/article/1/1/qxad010/7203673
• Hudson, B., Hunter, D., & Peckham, S. (2019). Policy failure and the policy-implementation gap: Can policy support programs help? Policy Design and Practice, 2(1), 1-14. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/25741292.2018.1540378