Health Reform – legislative drafting and rule making
We devote significant time throughout a variety of courses helping students understand the content and impact of the federal health reform on the U.S. health care system. However, less time is devoted to helping students to develop an appreciation for the intricacies of legislative drafting and the complexities of implementation. In this assignment, students are asked to break down one section of the health reform law - identify what entities are charged with implementing/rulemaking and what guidance and assistance they have in doing so.
Specifically, students should: 1) Inventory all federal statutes/regulations referenced in their chosen section of the act (i.e. tax code, Medicaid regulations) and/or identify what responsibilities will be delegated to the states; 2) assess the guidance provided to the agency charged with implementation or to the states if implementation is delegated to the states as well as the degree of funding provided for implementation activities; 3) discuss possible difficulties with the implementation or enforcement of the act. General critiques of the overall approach to universal coverage are useful, but students should focus on identification of logistical challenges with implementation.
Health Reform from an Organizational Perspective
The health policy class in this curriculum is taught from an economic interest group perspective. For the final project, students are assigned to teams and each team is assigned a different organizational type (for-profit hospital, not-for-profit hospital, nursing home, home health agency, etc.). The teams are then asked to describe their organization in detail. Teams are encouraged to use local organizations for their projects when possible and faculty work with students to connect them with local organizations if necessary. After the teams have identified their organizations, they must select an association that represents the organization’s interests. The teams describe how the interest group has historically addressed the industry’s legislative goals, as outlined in the textbook, and must also identify how the association receives its support. Next, each member of the team must select a section of the Affordable Care Act and any regulations that have been proposed or promulgated that pertain to their organization and must analyze the impact of that section on their organization and industry. The session at the Annual Meeting will discuss in detail the types of questions that the students must answer to assess the impact of the legislation and regulation. This assignment is designed to teach the students to think strategically and operationally about how to respond to specific details of health care related legislation.
Health Policy: A Reform Legislation Approach
In this undergraduate health policy class students first examine the Affordable Care Act before being divided into teams and assigned presentations and discussions to facilitate. The students’ reform project is woven throughout the entire course and is worth 30% of their overall grade. Given this is a senior-level course, the material builds on other related courses such as health care systems and trends, reimbursements, economics, quality, law, and finance. Presentations take place in class in front of their peers and guests, and asynchronous online discussions are done in Moodle. Background information, a SWOT analysis, references, and a personal/group reflection are some of the deliverables that must be completed for each assigned reform topic. Students must research their project and then lead class discussions on portions of the Affordable Care Act that consisted of at least an hour. Students are supposed to consider the multi-variants of a topic and be able to give some insight on the relevance and consequences of the event. Students are also expected to think about the ramifications/consequences/ associations that the issues bring as they are asked questions by not only their peers, but by potential staff and faculty members of the College.
These assignments cover multiple perspectives in understanding and implementing health policy and can be adapted for various classes. We hope that you will join our session on Friday, June 1 from 8:30am - 9:30am as we provide more detail on each of these assignments.