Overview

The final project for this course is the creation of a mock open comment to a significant federal legislation that has affected healthcare or the healthcare industry. An open comment is an informed opinion written in the form of a letter to counsel authors of legislation on the perceived benefits and consequences of the opinion. You will select a key issue affecting health and healthcare in the United States from the topic areas as defined by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and identify a corresponding health policy addressing that issue. This mock open comment will examine the macroeconomic forces at play in a recent healthcare policy and determine whether any forces were inadequately considered. The mock open comment should be nonpartisan, stakeholder agnostic, and supported by research from reputed sources. The final submission will correspond to the Purdue University method of organization for white papers as indicated on its Online Writing Lab (OWL).

The final project will be broken down into three separate components: submission of an executive summary with references, the open comment paper, and a five-minute ‘TED Talk-style’ presentation.

The project is divided into three milestones, which will be submitted at various points throughout the course to scaffold learning and ensure quality final submissions. These milestones will be submitted in Modules Two, Four, and Five. The final project will be submitted in Module Seven.

In this assignment, you will demonstrate your mastery of the following course outcomes:

Assess the strategic and operational use of economic principles and indicators to manipulate the healthcare experience for patients and their caregivers

Articulate the effects of contemporary policies and regulations on the American healthcare system and the healthcare consumer

Describe the impact of prominent financial models in healthcare on the strategies of market players

Distinguish the influence of socioeconomic factors of American society on the healthcare delivery system and community health

Analyze ways that behavioral models of demanders, suppliers, and other healthcare agencies influence economic determinates and barriers to change in the American healthcare system

Prompt

After choosing a topic area from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s topic areas, you will create a comment letter addressing the abilities and inabilities of a legislative action to impact the economic forces impacting the issue. The policy you select to evaluate should affect a health topic in which you have an interest or one that affects a population of significance to you. While your submission will center on a pivotal piece of legislation, this is not a policy paper. Focus on how the legislation would affect the key health issue and the macroeconomic forces that produced the issue.

The TED Talk-style portion of your project should start by making your audience care, using a relatable example or an intriguing idea explained clearly and with conviction. Describe your evidence and how and why your idea could be implemented, and conclude by addressing how your idea could affect your audience if they were to accept it. Further guidelines to preparing a good TED Talk are provided at the following link: TEDx Speaker Guide.

Your letter, as well as the corresponding ‘TED-style’ video presentation, will address the following critical elements:

Outline of Open Comment Letter with References

Based on the chosen key issue affecting health status, select a significant piece of federal legislation to analyze and explain how the federal legislation will address the issue.

Elaborate on the macroeconomic market forces at play that necessitated the piece of legislation.

Define the intended consequences of the legislation (i.e. to protect a vulnerable population, affect the value proposition of the health system, etc.)

Conduct a review of current resources (articles, websites, interviews, etc.) related to the tenets of the legislation.

Select the resources that most appropriately and concisely examine the legislation’s macro-and microeconomic impact and cite them according to APA citation guidelines.

Assess the point of view demonstrated in each resource and analyze the microeconomic mechanisms that will influence the behaviors of providers, insurers, vendors, and the population as a whole.

Open Comment Letter

Describe how the intended consequences of the legislation will positively and/or negatively impact the key health issue that it is tasked to affect once applied to a realistic environment.

Differentiate between the manner in which the major tenets of the legislation would be interpreted by a health economist, health practitioner, and/or consumer of healthcare services.

Summarize the logical interpretations of the legislation in a document with a member of Congress as the proposed audience.

Hypothesize the outcomes of the legislation in a document with a member of Congress as the proposed audience.

Decide whether the key health issue is being served by creating or subduing supply, demand, or cost of healthcare services and which stakeholder group (providers, consumers, or payors) bears the primary responsibility for its implementation.

Discern to what extent the legislation will impact the reimbursement and/or financial health of providers operating as for-profit, nonprofit, military, or government-sponsored care financing models.

Propose changes to the legislation that could be adopted to further affect socioeconomic determinants of health such as poverty, education, and diversity.

Propose what tactics could be implemented to ensure that the initial intent of the legislation could be safeguarded against perversion by macroeconomic forces and agents looking to exploit those forces to their advantage.

TED Talk

Passionately deliver your exposition to an audience of thought leaders, legislators, and stakeholders via a recorded web conference.

Create an innovative introduction that makes the audience care, using a relatable example or an intriguing idea.

Create the body of the talk that will describe your evidence and how and why your suggestions could be implemented.

Create the closing of the talk that will address how your idea could affect your audience if they were to accept what has been presented.

Milestones

Milestone One: Outline of Open Comment Letter with References

Submit an outline of your open comment letter with references. Choose a topic area from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s topic areas and then search journals, interview clips, and websites to find a piece of legislation that addresses the issue. Compile your sources and create a bibliography using APA style for listing citations. Digest the content of the legislation and complete a preliminary macroeconomic analysis of its intended impact. Provide an outline, which will serve as an overview of everything you learned from your research of the health issue and your preliminary recommendations for the legislation. This deliverable should be no more than two pages in length. It should help the reader understand why you chose the health issue at hand, how the legislation will affect it, what economic concepts and factors are at play, and what the implications of your findings are. This milestone is graded with the Milestone One Rubric.

Milestone Two: Open Comment Letter Draft

Submit a first draft of your open comment letter. An open comment is an informed opinion written in the form of a letter to counsel authors of legislation on the perceived benefits and consequences of the opinion. It should include background on the key health issue and your assumption of the risks inferred by the legislative action (i.e., unintended consequences, public reaction, loopholes, etc.). The economic analysis should be more complete than that of your executive summary, taking into account the nature of the U.S. healthcare system, socioeconomic factors, behavioral models of stakeholders that shape interpretations and outcomes. The document should not be based solely on emotion, though it should not be divorced of sentiment as it needs to rouse the proper energy needed to effect change. The goal of the document is to convince the reader that your suggestions for inclusion, exclusion, and adaptations to the legislation should be included in the final version of the action. It should be no more than five pages, not including references and supporting appendices. This milestone is graded with the Milestone Two Rubric.

Milestone Three: TED Talking Points

Submit a bulleted list of the points you will speak to in your TED-style presentation. A TED Talk is a short audiovisual presentation that espouses new ideas supported by concrete evidence, delivered by engaging, charismatic speakers. Your presentation should clarify the major points of the key health issue and the legislation, but moreover it should deeply explore why this topic is important to you and how the intended results will impact you or the population you hold dear. The talk should be no more than five minutes. This milestone is graded with the Milestone Three Rubric.

Final Project Submission: Open Comment Letter and TED talk

Submit the final version of your open comment letter along with the final version of your TED talk. This submission is graded with the Final Project Rubric (embedded below).