NR 503 Week 8 Discussion Health Policy and Ethics

Sample Answer

Bill SB 368

Health Care Coverage Deductibles and Out-Of-Pocket Expenses Issued, amended, or renewed on or after July 1, 2022, and It was sponsored by Monique Limon, a Democratic senator in District 19 of California.

The bill is meant to complement the knock-knee Health care service plan act of 1975, which limits out-of-pocket expenses. The bill SB 368 adds to the previous law that health care plans and insurers establish and maintain a system that allows patients to request and have it ready at any time for their most updated accrual balances from their health care services. This bill is meant to create more transparency of costs. (Guerrero & Fellow, 2021).

This bill is not significant, in my opinion, but it is a start. Healthcare insurance in this country is one of the most expensive in the world. In addition, out-of-pocket costs and surprise medical bills can disrupt patients’ finances that may have already been affected by their illness and inability to earn an income. The current healthcare system lacks cost transparency and has long been the cause of extreme financial hardship for individuals and families.

The author explains the healthcare system as “technologically sophisticated, extremely expensive, but inaccessible to the poor (Sage, 2019). I could not better agree with this definition. Anyone that has ever been without insurance in a time of illness can relate. Of course, patients can always go to the emergency room and get out with thousands of dollars in medical bills. Hospital fees, radiology fees, labs fees and do not forget the ER doctor’s fee. Even worst, if anesthesia was used, add a hefty anesthesiology fee.

If that is not bad enough, some states like Utah will take patients to court for amounts as low as 200 dollars, add lawyers’ fees and court hearings and easily win a $1200 wage garnishment in court. Some people may ask why the patients do not pay such a low amount and the short answer is that hospitals often will not send a bill to the patient and instead take them directly to court. A practice that I found shameful, at the least.

However, Utah is not alone in a similar practice, and fortunately, the US congress passed the No surprises act in 2020. This bill intends to protect patients with private insurance from surprise medical bills for emergency and out-of-network services (Stephenson, 2022). Even though nurses are mainly concerned about providing medical care and not getting involved with the insurance and financial aspect of the care they provide, nurses must get involved.

Nurses in the ER or other units have no idea what the care they provide will cost patients and do not consider that they are providing the most expensive care in the world. So why are nurses underpaid, understaffed, under-benefited, and the patients overcharged?

It is imperative that nurses get involved with principles of social justice and health policy like the ANA code of ethics, which provision nine advocates for as follows “The profession of nursing, collectively through its professional organizations, must articulate nursing values, maintain the integrity of the profession, and integrate principles of social justice into nursing and health policy” (Alves, 2022).

References

• Alves, J. (2022). Calling a code Nursing students’ application of the code of ethics to nursing
  practice. Proceedings of the 2022 AERA Annual Meeting. https //doi.org/10.3102/1899337Links to an external site.
• Guerrero, E. M., & Fellow, G. R. (2021, November 15). Recapping the 2021 session Healthcare legislation passed in California. The Source on HealthCare Price and Competition.
  https //sourceonhealthcare.org/recapping-the-2021-session-healthcare-legislation-passed-in-california/Links to an external site.
• Sage, W. M. (2019). Explaining America’s spendthrift healthcare system The enduring effects of public regulation on private competition. The Law and Policy of Healthcare Financing,
  17- 36. https //doi.org/10.4337/9781788115926.00009Links to an external site.
• Stephenson, J. (2022). Law banning surprise medical bills takes effect. JAMA Health Forum, 3(1), e220019. https //doi.org/10.1001/jamahealthforum.2022.0019Links to an external site.