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:

1. Outline of Open Comment Letter with References

a. 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.

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

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

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

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

f. 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.

2. Open Comment Letter

a. 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.

b. 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.

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

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

e. 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.

f. 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.

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

h. 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.

3. TED Talk

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

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

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

d. 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.