Essay on Regulatory vs. Allocative Health Policies: What's the Difference?

Introduction

Regulatory health policies usually differ from allocative health policies in several ways. One of the differences that exist between regulatory policies and allocative policies is that regulatory healthcare policies are policies that have been properly designed by the government influence other people through decisions, behaviors, and actions with the main purpose of attaining its objectives while allocative policies refer to the policies that target to benefit the specific groups of individuals by proving them with money and other resources. In regulatory policies, funds are normally distributed by the government through social regulations laws to benefit certain society, whereas, in allocative policies, funds are usually distributed by the government to be used in specified reason or cause.

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Regulatory policies focus on providing quality services through quality controls, thus promoting human safety while allocative policies are providing its services through redistributive whereby certain individuals are taxed, and thereafter the taxed money is redistributed to other groups of individuals (Andrews, & Cingano, 2014). Regulatory policies also based its decisions on acquisition of license before engaging in any market competition, whereas allocative policies depend on the money that is provided by the government to maintain their prices commodities. Moreover, regulatory policies consist of price setting and rates that aims at ensuring control during the process of providing health facilities by the providers while allocative policies compose of Medicaid, health facilities, services offered by the administration, Medicare, and prevention measures that have been set aside to help in ensuring people safety (Alley, Asomugha, Conway, & Sanghavi, 2016).

What are the Determinants of Health?

Determinants of health is a term that is normally used to describe the various factors that may bring influence on individual health. Examples of these factors include lifestyle, nutrition, genetics, environment, and culture. Lifestyle and nutrition are usually classified as the main determinants of health. This is because some people may engage in practices such as poor hygienic that might expose them to certain diseases, thus influencing their health. Genetics is the other determinant of health, and it usually influences the health status of various individuals through environmental impacts. Pollution that is normally witnessed in the environment, for instance, may bring about the influence on the health status of an individual or groups of people especially when there is destruction in the environment whereby these pollutions occurs and releases harmful substances into the atmosphere which in return causes various diseases and disorders among the people living in that particular region. Environmental factors such as poor means of transport and water also have an influence on people’s health because it might expose people to stress and waterborne diseases.

Poor working conditions are also the other factors that determine the health of an individual such that people who dwelt in poor living conditions to inability to improve their living standards may found themselves being stress. Also, poor living conditions among the people encourage the faster spread of diseases from one person to another, thus inferring with their health status. Furthermore, healthcare facilities are the determinant of individual health because of its positive influence on the safety of an individual (Preda, & Voigt, 2015). Healthcare facilities play a key role by offering access to health care facilities, therefore influencing individual health as well as promoting patient’s safety. Culture is the other determinant of health that negatively influences the health of an individual. Culture usually influences people’s health, whereby some people strictly adhere to the set beliefs and norms in their various communities. As a result of strict adherence to these norms and beliefs, culture may, therefore, influence people’s health, especially the sick, in that some people will have a negative attitude towards the sick person through the rare provision of health care support.

Relationship Between Determinants of Health and Determinants of Health Policy

Determinants of health and those of heath policy relate in several ways. Promoting individual health is one of the ways in which they relate because both of these determinants majorly focus on implementing laws that aim at ensuring that the health status of the people in various communities has been fully gathered. Also, determinants of health relate to the determinants of health policy since they are meant to ensure the provision of quality services to the people to avoid health-related problems among the people. Determinants of health are also similar to the determinants of health policy because they enable people to identify various ways of getting access to public resources such as healthcare services.

There is also a close relationship between the determinants of health and the determinants of health policy in terms of the impacts that has on each other. Health policy may negatively impact the determinants of health, such as social factors (Preda, & Voigt, 2015). When it comes to social factors as one of the determinants of health, health policy may impact the social factors such as race through the implementation of health care policies that favors one tribe from other especially when it comes to sharing of public resources among the people living in a particular country, therefore, leading to racial discrimination. Also, there is a connection between the determinants of health and health policy because health policy plays a key role by designing laws that help in coping with challenges associated with the determinants of health.

Summary

There various types of health policies. Regulatory and allocative are some of the examples of health policies. Regulatory policies may vary from allocative policies in several ways; Regulatory health policies are the policies that have been designed to influence other people through actions, behaviors, and decisions whereas allocative policies are usually the policies that have been established to bring benefits a specific group of people in certain communities. Also, regulatory policies emphasize on quality control while allocative policies focus on redistribution and taxing of certain groups of individuals. Moreover, regulatory policies distribute requires the government to distribute its money through the idea of social regulations laws, but when it comes to allocative policies, funds are distributed by the government based on the intended purpose of that money.

There are also various determinants of health that possess some influences in a wide field of life. These determinants are; lifestyle, genetics, nutrition, culture, and environment. Lifestyle and nutrition are among the leading determinant of health, especially when people engaging in practices that entail the negligence of hygienic measures. Environment and genetics are also part of determinant of health in that environmental factors such as pollution and degradation may expose the people to dangerous diseases that can be transmitted from one person to another, therefore, undermining their health. Culture is the other determinant of health because people in our different societies usually have a different perspective towards the ill person due to strict adherence to their norms and beliefs.

Determinants of health and determinants of health policy usually relate to one another in the following ways. Health policy plays a primary role in ensuring adequate provision of quality health care services, thus promoting human safety. Health policy and determinants of health are also similar since they influence each other in a certain way; for instance, a government can implement some laws that help in governing the determinants of health as well as providing a clear guideline to be followed to avoid any interference on people’s health.

References

Alley, D. E., Asomugha, C. N., Conway, P. H., & Sanghavi, D. M. (2016). Accountable health communities—addressing social needs through Medicare and Medicaid. N Engl J Med, 374(1), 8-11.

Andrews, D., & Cingano, F. (2014). Public policy and resource allocation: evidence from firms in OECD countries. Economic Policy, 29(78), 253-296.

Preda, A., & Voigt, K. (2015). The social determinants of health: Why should we care?. The American Journal of Bioethics, 15(3), 25-36.