Prescription Drugs Costs Assignment

Prescription Drugs Costs Assignment

Prescription Drugs Costs Assignment

Each week, you will be asked to respond to the prompt or prompts in the discussion forum. Your initial post should be 75-150 words in length, and is due on Sunday. By Tuesday, you should respond to two additional posts from your peers.

Prescription Costs

The amount Americans spend on prescription drugs has nearly doubled since the 1990s, meaning the United States spends the most of any high-income nation. Americans didn’t always spend the most. In the 1980s, several countries spent about the same amount per capita as the U.S. The U.S. healthcare spending grew faster in the 1990s. According to the Common Fund (2017), this was partially because several expensive specialty drugs came to market .The drug companies set the price in the United States, unlike in Europe, which has price controls. Americans often pay substantially more for the same drug than people in other countries do.

Recently, lawmakers have questioned the pricing structure of pharmaceuticals, especially when EpiPen reached a price of $300 per dose and top executives in the drug companies were given bonuses. Then CVS, a large pharmacy, announced they were going to purchase AETNA, a large insurer. Headlines such as these have caused the public to question the transparency of the pharmaceutical Industry.

Report on the factors that contribute to the growth in medications

Include the following aspects in the discussion:

Find a scholarly article on the costs of medications
Explore whether pharmaceuticals should be regulated
Discuss the impact of medication costs for the uninsured
Consider actions that could be taken to reduce medication costs
Part 2

Each week, you will be asked to respond to the prompt or prompts in the discussion forum. Your initial post should be 75-150 words in length, and is due on Sunday. By Tuesday, you should respond to two additional posts from your peers.

Copays and deductibles

When I complete my yearly health benefit enrollment I am asked if I consume nicotine. If I have been “nicotine free” for 12 months I receive lower costs for my health insurance. This is similar to so-called “sin” taxes. The states and federal government levy taxes as a disincentive for consumers to engage in those activities deemed a health risk: tobacco products, alcohol, junk food, sugary drinks. Other countries, such as Australia have taken this a step further with MDs beginning to refuse to do elective surgeries for those illnesses related to these risky behaviors. A patient that needs, for instance, a femoral popliteal bypass (clogged artery in the leg) as a result of smoking, and for whom it was not an emergency, might be refused the surgery until they stop smoking.

Consider this scenario: You are the manager of a small business. One of your responsibilities is to oversee the health care plan for 10 employees. In examining last year’s costs you note that the smokers in the group averaged 20% higher health care related costs than the nonsmokers. However, the employee diagnosed with cancer had higher costs than the other nine together. You must make a change to break even. Your options are:

Raise weekly fees, deductibles, and copays for all 10 employees
Raise weekly fees, deductibles, and copays for just the smokers and cancer patient (who never smoked)
Raise weekly fees, deductibles, and copays for the smokers but not the cancer patient
Lower the quality of the plan for all employees to maintain the same costs
Raise premiums for all but offer lower deductibles and co-pays for nonsmokers and those who quit smoking
Customize your health care plan costs for your employees

Include the following aspects in the discussion:

Describe your thought process as you work through each option
Did what is moral or ethical play a role in your decision
Discuss the role of punishing behaviors that can hurt health vs the role of encouraging healthful behaviors by offering incentives such as lower premiums

 

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.

ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS

Discussion Questions (DQ)

Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.
Weekly Participation

Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.
APA Format and Writing Quality

Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.
Use of Direct Quotes

I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source.
LopesWrite Policy

For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.
Late Policy

The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.
Communication

Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:
Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.