Technology Diffusion and Productivity Growth

Question: Discuss about the Technology Diffusion and Productivity Growth. Answer: Introduction: Rising healthcare costs have become a major concern for all the developed countries in the world. In the present day, many of the nations have conducted researches regarding the amount of expenditure on healthcare. They have come to a conclusion that their expenditure on healthcare is lowering the economic stability of the nation. The nations now believe that it is highly important to introduce reforms that will reduce the spending of the government on healthcare. However the governments are also concerned about the increase in expenditure that would affect every citizen if the governments reduce their contribution forcing citizens to spend huge money from their own pockets. Therefore most of the nations who think of their citizens are in great dilemma about the expenditure in healthcare sectors thereby appoint policy makers to introduce reforms that will help both the government and the citizens to contribute the increasing cost of healthcare (Groves et al. 2016). However, there has been always a debate among health economists. One group suggests that in order to match up with the increasing healthcare costs, it is the duty of the individuals to pay for their healthcare expenditure. On the other hand, another group argues that in order to maintain equality among the healthcare expenditures, both high and low income families should have similar access to healthcare. In order to do so, there should be enough contribution from the government for low income families (Drummond et al. 2015). Therefore the essay will mainly focus on the dilemma that a policy maker will face while taking side for a particular side of the debate. It will also portray about how the issue can be dealt so that the main outcome of healthcare cost can be reduced without creating a hole in pocket of both citizens and the government. In the recent era, in most nations, it has seen that there is huge increase in the expenditure of the healthcare sectors. One of the prime reasons for the increase in healthcare cost is the increasing advancement in technology and its inclusion in each aspect of healthcare departments (Kayyali, Knott and Van 2013). The duty of a policy advisor would not be to create excessive pressure both on the government and on the citizens. A better policy advisor would be a person who will guide the entire nation in a way which will help to stabilize the increasing hike in healthcare sectors (Jones et al. 2014). It has been seen that technology is considered to involve presentation of drugs, devices along with different medical or surgical procedures. New technologies have also helped in several prevention and rehabilitation of different diseases. It has been stated by many researchers that the primary reason for increase in healthcare cost in the present era is due to the technological change n ecessary to treat patients. This technological use in healthcare has helped in increasing benefits like life expectancy, reduction in disability among the different elderly as well as decreased number of mortality in many cases where patients used to die previously (Skinner and Stagier 2015). However at the same time, citizens should pay importance to the cost of the benefits that they are taking help. In order to save the lives of loved ones, they are utilizing healthcare technologies but these technologies come at a higher cost and therefore such innovations and their services are costly. These must be analyzed by citizens that just like they are being able to save lives of family members with technologies which otherwise would have not been possible without technologies. Hence, they should also feel that is indeed important for them to contribute more to the healthcare system as the recent systems have to spend a lot of money for maintenance and servicing of the technological adv ancements incorporated in the setting. Many new types of equipment have been introduced for treatment as in case of myocardial infarction (Kontos et al. 2014). Besides pharmacological intervention, a number of different intervention like thrombolytic therapy, angiography, angioplasty, coronary bypass surgery and similar others have been introduced. All these services use extensive technological supports and therefore are costly. However at the same time, they have decreased the number of people suffering from myocardial infarction. Therefore, as citizens one should also feel responsible in spending out of pocket in order to get more benefits of technology for the costlier services (Gell et al. 2013). However, hospitals should also be ethical enough in charging the cost for the new technology. There are also reports that many hospitals undertake unnecessary tests and overuse of high cost technology mainly in the private healthcare sectors. These hospitals tend to earn more profits by unnecessary application of technology even in different diagnoses which might be done without technological help. Such discrepancies should be monitored by regulatory bodies so that unnecessary so that citizens are not forced to pay more than what is needed (Sultan 2014). The government should also implement regulatory bodies where they would evaluate the economically implications and analyze the cost and cost effectiveness and thereby implement policies which would help to save money by the citizens. The government should also take initiatives for the appraisal of social and ethical implications about the diffusion as well as the use of health technologies and other organizational implications (Chib, van Velthoven and Car 2015). Moreover discrimination is also present in the healthcare industry that also needs to be properly analyzed. There are two types of healthcare insurances that are utilized by a particular citizen. This involves the private healthcare policies and public healthcare policies. The private healthcare policies are mainly initiated by the different healthcare sectors or private companies in association with hospitals and nursing homes. The private healthcare insurances usually charge more to the patients and the insurance they cover is of huge amount as well (Khatib et al. 2016). However the governmental initiatives of the insurances cover budgets which are comparatively smaller than the private ones. Moreover, it has been suggested by many studies that the governmental health insurances also pay less to the doctors. However still the doctors remain attached with public sectors as they tend to increase the amount of the bill ultimately matching the budget with that of the private insurances . On the other hand, private insurances pay more to the doctors as they cannot afford the doctors leaving the carriers. Therefore, one can see both the private and the public insurances are providing the equal money to the healthcare sectors for attaining the same treatments (Hill and Cooke 2014). As a responsible citizen having a moderate to high income of money should not create extra pressure on the government for providing money to the healthcare expenditure of a middle income to high income family. It has been already established that both the type of insurances nearly provide the same sort of assistances (Perry, Zulliger and Rogers 2014). Therefore systems should be adopted in such a way that moderate and high income individual should opt for private insurances. People belonging to high socioeconomic background should spend more on their premiums so that an overall stability in financing the healthcare system can be achieved. The main motive of the healthcare system and its ex penditure should be based on equity. By this statement, it means that the individuals who are privileged with high income should more as the premium whereas people of low economic background should be helped by the government. This system would help in achieving a condition where sufficient finance can be accumulated for meeting the needs of healthcare for both the privileged and underprivileged (Nagarajan and Shrieff 2017). Moreover it would be also helpful if the government can develop a hand in deciding the money which would be paid as tax to the government. The high income and middle income citizens would be classified into a number of slabs and depending upon it, their percentage of tax would be decided. This would be helpful in lessening the stress on the pocket of low income families and also of the government. Although it would be the citizens who would be spending the money, the government should play an important role in the setting up of proper slabs depending upon which their payment of healthcare tax should be fixed. Their authority to hold private insurances would also depend upon their salary slab as well. This system is evidence based and would help to maintain equity among different healthcare systems. This is helpful as it does not create excessive economic pressure on the citizens and only extracts that minimal amount which can be provided by them to help the healthcare sectors to provide them services in need (George et al. 2016). Therefore, the initiative would be taken by the government to introduce healthcare benefits for low economic households, introduce slab systems for payment of taxes to meet the healthcare needs and encourage the high and middle economic families to uptake private insurances without creating pressure on governmental funds. Recently another important trend in rise in healthcare cost is linked with the rise in prevalence of manmade disease . There are a large number of diseases like diabetes, obesity, substance abuse disorders, excessive smoking, alcohols and many others which mainly take place due to improper life styles which are involuntary. Often certain behaviors like lack of exercises, overconsumption of food, intake of calorigenic food and many other often result from an individuals own choices. Moreover many nations are seen to be more inclined on spending money on treatment rather than trying best to preventive (Keift et al. 2014). The World Health Organization has already tried its best to create awareness among citizens of every nation. They have clearly discussed the concept of prevention of diseases stating that prevention is indeed the most cost effective process of decreasing the rate of chronic diseases especially for those individuals who are at the higher risk of the disease. WHO has al so shared facts where they have stated that about 80% of the different diseases like heart disease, diabetes, stroke, along with one third of the cancers can be avoided by individuals (Spinks et al. 2017). They can achieve this by eliminating the shared risk factors which may include tobacco use, physical inactivity, and unhealthy diet and also overuse of drugs and alcohol. Many of the diseases can be checked if the citizens are careful enough with their lives and through regular preventive healthcare such as diagnostic screenings (www.acponline.org 2017). However still people are careless and take their lives for granted until they are affected with severe disorder. In such cases, patients with these habits applying for governmental help for financing his healthcare expenditures is morally and ethically incorrect. Therefore the governmental help should be specified for usage of particular classes of people and for particular specified diseases, so that the chances of exploitation o f governmental fund can be prevented. In order to do so the government should develop systems for properly analyzing the kind of service needed by the patients, his financial status, his credibility, his needs and others before deciding on the aid (George et al. 2016). The government should introduce policies that will encourage citizens to develop proper living habits rather than taking healthcare funds for granted. The government can help by introducing proper education systems for citizens who will help them to undertake proper lifestyles and therefore reduce the occurrences of disorders. However, often patients become victimized to high prices of healthcare services; this is mainly due to different factors of the healthcare services that tend to increase the bill of patients. Often patients who visit to hospitals for healthcare services are provided with options of treatments which are much more costly than the alternatives which were not disclosed to the patients. Therefore the patients often fail in proper decision making (Kieft et al. 2014). Here, the patients become victims to the discrepancies of the hospitals as a result of which their expenditure gets higher. The hospitals tend to charge more when they see patients with insurances. Moreover often patients also become victim to different types of errors conducted by healthcare professionals. This again led to a huge expenditure of the resources on behalf of the patients (Mosadehgraj 2014). There have been many cases where it is reported like improper medication administration to patients following a wrong route , a wrong dose, a wrong procedure and many others have increased the stay of patients in healthcare sectors. Although one is expecting the patients to pay amount from their pockets in case of their ailments, this kind of errors from the healthcare groups should be highly criticized. The government should come forward and introduce strict rules and policies which will handle such errors and take strict disciplinary rules (Lee 2015). Moreover hospitals are also admitting patients with diseases for which specialists are not available. This is resulting in compromise of the health of the patient along with that of the resources of the patients. Moreover many hospitals are incapable of maintain a correct skill mix of healthcare professionals. This also affects the quality treatment that a patient expects form a healthcare sector. There are also many hospitals which after attaining a brand value try to impose higher charges for their services irrespective of the costs which are fixed by t he government. Therefore, the hospitals should be properly regulated by the strict governmental monitoring so that the hospitals can be careful in the interventions they apply (Metsala and Vaherkoski 2014). The government should be particular in the policies that apply. They should ensure accurate costing of each of the health services and the health products that the hospitals are providing to the students. The government should also try to implement strategies to turn the inappropriate workforce into trained individuals so that the chance of patients spending more money on errors conducted by unskilled workers can be avoided (Pellegrin et al. 2017). Also the high administration cost of well known hospitals should also be managed properly so that the costs do not create a pressure on the pockets of the patients. As a senior policy advisor of the Ministry of Health, it would be the duty of the advisor to introduce reforms that will help in decreasing the healthcare costs associated with healthcare services. Each services and products of the healthcare sectors should be properly analyzed and their pricing should be foxed, so that any discrepancies do not affect the pocket of the patients. The government should initiate reforms to introduce strategies that will prevent excessive flow of money from patients. This may include strategic spending of the patients for healthcare through payment of health taxes according to their earning slab. The patients with higher income should pay higher tax than people with moderate income. This would help in preventing pressure on both the government and also low economic families. Moreover the high income families should be encouraged for private insurances so that the finance under the government can be spent for those patients coming from poverty stricken fa milies and similar backgrounds. By this way, the policy advisor will be able to strike a balance in the health care expenditure and maintain equity in healthcare. As the government should be concerned with the healthcare of the patients who are unable to afford healthcare costs, the upper and middle class families should also be responsible for marinating their healthcare costs to some extent. This would create less pressure on the economic condition of the nation and would help nation spend money on other development sectors which would help in the growth of very individuals financially. The government should provide a subsidy to every healthcare sector to keep their service price low. 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