Environmental Health Essay Paper

Participate in health care policy development to influence nursing practice and health care.

Research public health issues on the \”Climate Change\” or \”Topics and Issues\” pages of the American Public Health Association (APHA) website. Investigate a public health issue related to an environmental issue within the U.S. health care delivery system and examine its effect on a specific population.

Write a 750-1,000-word policy brief that summarizes the issue, explains the effect on the population, and proposes a solution to the issue.

Follow this outline when writing the policy brief:

Describe the policy health issue. Include the following information: (a) what population is affected, (b) at what level does it occur (local, state, or national), and (c) evidence about the issues supported by resources.
Create a problem statement.
Provide suggestions for addressing the health issue caused by the current policy. Describe what steps are required to initiate policy change. Include necessary stakeholders (government officials, administrator) and budget or funding considerations, if applicable.
Discuss the impact on the health care delivery system.
Include three peer-reviewed sources and two other sources to support the policy brief.

Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center. An abstract is not required.

This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.

Environmental Health

Health policy refers to actions, plans and decisions undertaken to achieve specific health care goals within the population/community. An explicitly presented health policy identifies short-term and long-term goals and defines a vision for the future. In addition, it outlines the expected roles of the different stakeholders and priorities while informing the stakeholders and building consensus. Health policy issues can fall into two broad categories. The first category is health care coverage to include payment and cover for health insurance. The second category is underlying cost of health care to include any approach that seeks to reduce the overall health care spending by reducing health care utilization or price (Schoonveld, 2015). Environmental Health Essay Paper  The present paper discusses prescription drug pricing as a policy issue that is related to the underlying cost of health care.

Prescription drug pricing remains a top health care priority in America. In fact, the issue is influenced by the rising cost of prescription drugs that is affecting all Americans. In fact, 80% of Americans believe that prescription drug prices as are unreasonably high in the country when compared to neighboring countries (Mexico and Canada). Attention to the issue is driven by the perception that the legislature and the President have made minimal effort to address the issue. Additional attention to the issue has been occasioned by sensational media coverage on dramatic price increases of commonly used prescription drugs that included insulin and Epi-pens (Dalia, 2016; Kesselheim, Avorn & Sarpatwari, 2016).

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Prescription drug pricing presents in three main layouts. The first layout is high and increasing prices for effective, commonly use and old drugs. Pharmaceutical companies have been reported to simply increase prices because it is profitable and the demand can support the new prices. This is seen in cases where legislative loopholes allow manufacturers to monopolize the trade in the drugs. These loopholes are designed to incentivize the development of new drugs and yet manufacturers monopolize these loopholes to increase business profits as they lock out the competition and abuse the patents. The second layout is presenting expensive drugs when there are cheaper alternatives. Consumers do not have the knowledge to identify the more effective drugs, and pharmaceutical companies take advantage of this shortcoming to maintain its market by presenting expensive drugs that may have limited effectiveness. The third layout is presenting high prices for new drugs. Manufacturers occasionally have research breakthroughs and present new and effective drugs that capture a new market. The craze of a new and effective treatment allows them to offer the drugs at high prices (van der Gronde, Uyl-de Groot & Pieters, 2017).

At the core of the issue is the drug price lists set by pharmaceutical companies. Although the eventual prices that consumers pay becomes skewed by rebates and discounts as the drug moves through the distribution chain, the price list has a large influence on what the consumers eventually pay. Consequently, there is a need for policy intervention at the pharmaceutical price list level since this is the underlying problem. Even if the manufacturer price list cannot be controlled through policies, there are other policy interventions that can be applied to address the issue (van der Gronde, Uyl-de Groot & Pieters, 2017).

The first approach is to create new transparency legislation that make public how manufacturers determine drug prices to include pharmaceutical development costs and profits. This is intended to condense public attention and pressure so that manufacturers are forced to set more reasonable prices. Although such a policy change would not provide the government with any legislative authority to control drug prices, it offers public insight that inspires public pressure on pharmaceutical companies to reform pricing practices and offer fairer prices (Schoonveld, 2015).

The second approach is to create new legislation that gives the government the authority to institute financial penalties and legal action against pharmaceutical companies that gauge prescription drug prices. The third approach is to protect competition so that manufacturers do not have a monopoly on drugs. This approach would be targeted at presenting affordable biosimilars and generics in markets with shortages or minimal competition. The fourth approach is to facilitate importation from markets where the drugs are cheaper. This would permit consumers to import supplies of prescription drugs from approved foreign pharmacies. The final approach is an international reference pricing that would peg prescription drug prices to a median of selected references countries. This would help in regulating the absolute prices of drugs to levels that are comparable to other countries (Schoonveld, 2015).

One must accept that prescription drug pricing is an issue of concern in the USA owing to its implications for consumers. The issue has three main layouts presented as: high and increasing prices for effective, commonly use and old drugs; presenting expensive drugs over cheaper alternative; and high prices for new drugs. At the core of the issue is the manufacturers drug price lists. In addition, one must acknowledge that the outlook is grim unless policy interventions are implemented. Five policy interventions have been proposed to address the issue: drug pricing transparency legislation; financial penalties and legal action for price gauging; protecting competition; facilitating importation; and international reference pricing.

References

Dalia, S. (2016). The High Cost of Prescription Drugs in America. American Journal of Nursing, 116(12), 14. https://doi.org/10.1097/01.NAJ.0000508647.48317.35

Kesselheim, A., Avorn, J. & Sarpatwari, A. (2016). The High Cost of Prescription Drugs in the United States: Origins and Prospects for Reform. JAMA, 316(8), 858-871. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2016.11237

Schoonveld, E. (2015). The Price of Global Health: Drug Pricing Strategies to Balance Patient Access and the Funding of Innovation (2^nd ed.). Gower Publishing Limited.

van der Gronde, T., Uyl-de Groot, C. & Pieters, T. (2017) Addressing the challenge of high-priced prescription drugs in the era of precision medicine: A systematic review of drug life cycles, therapeutic drug markets and regulatory frameworks. PLoS ONE 12(8), e0182613. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0182613 .  Environmental Health Essay Paper