How Do We Fund Flourishing? Maybe Not through Health Care

Hastings Center Report 48 (S3):62-66 (2018)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

The health policy community has a growing interest in the impact of nonmedical determinants of health, such as housing, nutrition, and social supports, on both health outcomes and costs. This interest has been spurred by the Affordable Care Act’s emphasis on prevention, Robert Wood Johnson’s grant‐making focus on a Culture of Health, and an uptick of research demonstrating the potential returns to health care from investments in social services. Much of this policy‐making, grant making, and research has focused on older Americans.The direct policy implications of this strategy can be elusive. It has become clear that more than medicine will be necessary to improve older Americans’ health status. Real improvement likely requires the development of additional social service offerings, including housing that is accessible to people with disabilities, Meals on Wheels‐type nutrition supports, and transportation. But who should bear the costs and control the finances associated with these programs? In this essay, I explore the question of how policy‐makers should consider financing nonmedical investments in older Americans’ health. As the reader will recognize, I stop short of arguing for what will work. Rather, I identify the strands of an emerging strategy—namely, for health care dollars to be diverted into social service programming—and offer several cautions. It may be that policy‐makers still wish to continue down this path, but my hope is that this essay will allow them to so with greater attention to the risks and unintended consequences of that strategy.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 90,616

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Flourishing in Health Care.Andrew Edgar & Stephen Pattison - 2016 - Health Care Analysis 24 (2):161-173.
The right to preventive health care.Sarah Conly - 2016 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 37 (4):307-321.
From Needs to Health Care Needs.Erik Gustavsson - 2013 - Health Care Analysis (1):1-14.

Analytics

Added to PP
2018-10-12

Downloads
3 (#1,519,925)

6 months
1 (#1,040,386)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Lauren Taylor
East Carolina University

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references