Annotated Bibliography |
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1. California Healthcare Association. “California Hospital Billing and Collection Practices.” February 6th, 2004. The guidelines outlined by the CHA within this document, referred to the assistance needed by low-income and uninsured patients of hospitals within California. Although I am focusing on private practice with my project, understanding how hospitals are able to overcome these access issues can relate to private practice and their ability to provide access as well. Also, most, if not all, physicians who bill patients in the hospital have their own private practice. By assessing these different guidelines, such as informing a patient if they may qualify for government aid, can help overcome issues involving the uninsured. 2. Eggleston, Karen. “Risk Selection and Optimal Health Insurance-Provider Payment Systems.” The Journal of Risk and Insurances, Vol. 67, No. 2, (Jun. 2000), pp. 173-196. By describing how moral dilemmas arise within the context of health insurance and who is covered, Eggleston helps support my project in discussing the ethics of access to health care. Especially important is her point concerning the ability for providers to serve as a bridge between patients and insurance companies. 3. Jonsen, Albert, et al. “A practical Approach to Ethical Decisions in Clinical Medicine” Clinical Ethics, sixth edition. McGraw-Hill Medical Publishing Division: United States, 2006. pp. 176-189. Jonsen et al. address various ethical issues involved with the health care industry. Most importantly they discuss the moral obligations put upon physicians. They understand the importance of physicians and other medical professionals working towards justice and equality with regards to access of the under and uninsured. 4. Light, Donald. “Fostering a Justice-based Health Care System.” Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 29, No. 1, Utopian Visions: Engaged Sociologies for the 21st Century, (Jan 2000), pp.62-74 This article, written by Professor Donald Light of Princeton University, touches on some of the basic flaws involved with our current health care system within the United States. He refers to his research over the years when building an ‘outline [for] an ideal health care system’. By describing the ultimate society of caring and interacting participants, he helps to contribute to my ideas of how physicians must work with their population of patients as a whole in providing sufficient care. Professor Light explores the idea of ‘minimizing the financial impact of illness’ as well as describing ‘Benchmarks of fairness’ in order to work towards the equality desired in our current system. It is through his arguments and articulate benchmarks that he pinpoints various areas, such as the misleading ‘for-profit nature of the U.S. healthcare system’, which help portray the flawed system, as well as support my ideas of a less complicated system not based on financial reimbursement. This article is a perfect example of a case study portraying the ability of primary care physicians to provide services to their already existing patients who may have had health insurance at some point, but somehow became uninsured. How they were able to do this is explored as well as how they have worked to implement their strategy in other physicians’ practices. They stress the importance of the issue and act as an example to others. 6. O’Toole et al. “Primary Care Office Policies Regarding Care of Uninsured Adult Patients” Journal of General Internal Medicine, Vol 16, October 2001. pp. 693-696. This study includes percentages regarding the number of physicians within the Pennsylvania area, who either currently provide care to uninsured or are willing to accept uninsured patients. Also the writers address the important issue of how providing care does not necessarily equate to the uninsured seeking out care. Although they may provide care, billing policies will often re-establish the barrier of access to healthcare. |
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