Putting Patient Concerns on the Policy Agenda
subject: Patient, gender, Age, disease, Philosophy, policy-making, AMA, big health
description: Photo by Possessed Photography on Unsplash INTRODUCTION Currently, the interests of patients at most levels of policymaking are represented by a disconnected patchwork of groups focusing on disease, age, ethnicity, or gender, like Susan G. Komen, the AARP, and the NAACP. These groups compete with one another for funding and are ill-equipped to compete with groups representing the interests of healthcare professionals, pharmaceutical and medical device companies, hospitals, and insurance providers. The result is an imbalance – big health has more financing and power, resulting in healthcare policy that does not adequately reflect patient concerns, especially the concerns of poor or otherwise vulnerable patients. These big health groups also misrepresent patient concerns to further their own interests, and patients are seldom in a position to push back. While some suggest the creation of a unified, independent patient lobby to interface directly with policymakers and the public, it is not altogether clear how such a lobby could be formed or how to focus its efforts to have the intended impact. ANALYSIS Nearly all Americans will be patients at some point in their life, so patients are a diverse group. They have a range of unique interests informed by their disease, age, location, socioeconomic situation and, to some extent, political views. The differences that exist between individual patients are much greater than the differences between different pharmaceutical companies or even different physicians. But this does not mean that patients have nothing in common. Most patients have similar expectations about the confidentiality of their records or protections that should be afforded to them if their treating physician asks them to participate in a research trial. They want to be able to receive care at the nearest emergency department and to choose their doctors. They all hate surprise medical billing, and most are troubled by the high price of prescription drugs. A st…
creator: Gyan Moorthy
source: Epidemiology and Health
publisher: Korean Society of Epidemiology
date: 2021
coverage: Ethics, Medical philosophy. Medical ethics