Healthcare Policy Formulation - Essay Example

"Healthcare Policy Formulation" is an excellent example of a paper on the health system. The objective of this policy is to cover health care costs for people with low levels of income without having to register for Medicare or Medicaid programs. Such a law will help people at their time of need and will be part of the states’ role to promote the welfare of its people. The formulation stage involves coming up with a viable bill that can be forwarded to the legislators. This should be done carefully by considering the aim of the bill and the overall impact it will have on the target audience. Key points are noted and drafted before being analyzed further to come up with a final draft.

There are various stakeholders who are party to any given law. In this case, there will be nurses and other health officials. Consequently, there are legislators.  Nurses and doctors are the people who offer medical help to the sick. Based on this position, they have encountered people in their worst possible conditions, and they understand the importance of appropriate health care service delivery. Their main aim of the healthcare policy is to ensure that all people, despite their financial ability, have access to proper medical care. Legislators are vital stakeholders in light of the law. The main aim of legislators is to pass laws in any given country (Calkins, 2005). However, this is not an easy task given that there are hundreds of bills that are forwarded to the house. Many are discarded during the preliminary stages. As stakeholders, it is their duty to ensure that this bill is forwarded to the floor of the house. In most cases, they have a political motive and will forward such a bill provided that they also profit from it in return. Such anticipated gains can be in the form of support from health workers’ unions during elections.

The legislative stage involves bringing on board legislators who will look at the legal aspect of the item that the stakeholders want to be considered as part of the law (Mason, 2012). This process is important as it will enact a law, create appropriate health programs and fund them while also balancing the health policies with other policies. During this process, various individuals who are pushing for the enactment of the law, in this case, the nurses, will meet the legislators. For more efficiency, legislators usually operate in various committees, and the nurses will testify to the select committee. After this, the committee will take action on a specific bill and then forward it to the floor of the house where there will be a final vote.

For the policy to be passed, it must be approved by the legislators. This requires professional assistance in the preparation of the bill. The nurses who are the main stakeholders of this bill prepare this document and outline the changes that should be made to the health system within the country (Kronenfeld, 2010). When the draft is complete, the nurses should identify legislators that they direct to introduce a bill to the house and sponsor it. To emphasize their point, they would have to use all the presentation techniques that they can access to try to sell their idea to the legislators. It is the legislators that will introduce a bill to the house, and the main target should be legislators who have knowledge of health issues and its social impacts. Once they are convinced of the efficiency of the bill, they will forward it to the house and when it gets a majority vote among the legislators it will be passed into law. Based on this, there will be budgetary allocations to finance its enactment by the hospitals and other stakeholders.

The implementation stage is the phase where the policy that had been passed is adopted by the public and is put into effect. For it to be effective, there are three elements that must be taken into account (Kronenfeld, 2012). These are the interpretation, organization, and application of the policies. There should be proper organization during the implementation stage to ensure that the laws are implemented by the proper agencies within the government. However, in some cases, special agencies are put up that will ensure these policies are implemented. Implementation should be done carefully so that there is a proper interpretation of the law to match its legislative intent (Zaric, 2013). The interpretation will be directly reflected in the guidelines and the operating rules. Since there are other existing laws in place, the new law’s application should be a smooth process and ought not to disrupt any operations. It should act in coordination and blend in as much as possible. This phase is the most difficult in the policy formulation process as it requires a lot of goodwill from the stakeholders.

In light of this policy, various parties are accountable for their implementation, and each has a specific role that they play. One of the parties is the legislators who sponsored the bill in the legislature. It is their duty to ensure that the bill gets the desired amount of funding from the treasury and that it is disbursed to various health centers.  The main stakeholders ascribed to the implementation are the nurse and health officials who pushed for the bill. This is because it will be their duty to ensure that the policies are implemented in the manner that they wanted them to be done. The final parties involved will be the public, in this case, the people with a minimum income. They are the main beneficiaries of the law and as such, will be the recipients of the free medical services.