Arenas of Healthcare Politics

Running Head: Module 2 Written Assignment

Module 2 Written Assignment

Arenas of Health Care Politics

Rasmussen College

Author’s Note

This assignment is being submitted on October 20, 2013 for Professor Laura Sheneman’s H360 Healthcare Planning and Policy Management course at Rasmussen College

Module 2 Written Assignment ~ Arenas of Health Care Politics

There are four policy arenas within health care politics. Those four arenas include subsidy, financing, reorganization, and regulatory. Each of these plays an important role within health care. The subsidy arena ensures financial support is provided while the financial arena controls spending. The reorganization arena strives to reform health care while regulatory actions are created to standardize specific areas of health care.

Subsidy

Within the subsidy arena of healthcare politics, one legislative act to provide financial support is Section 1011 of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 with provides federal reimbursement of emergency health services furnished to undocumented aliens (CITATION-DHHS). This legislative action ensures payments are made for services furnished to individuals that meet the following criteria: 1) they are undocumented, 2) aliens who have been paroled in the U.S. at a U.S. port of entry for the purpose of receiving eligible medical services, or 3) are Mexican citizens permitted to enter the U.S. for not more than 72 hours under the authority of the biometric machine readable border crossing identification card” (Department of Health and Human Services, 2013). As of February of this year, this legislation has responded to more than 1.5 million payment requests and disbursed more than $945 million in provider payments (Department of Health and Human Services, 2013).

While this is a Medicare funded program, it is not processed by the government directly. Instead it is managed by Novitas Solutions, Inc., the national contractor and distributor of the funds...