Assignment 1.1_Gourmand and Food Case Study
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University of Nevada, Reno *
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755
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Medicine
Date
Dec 6, 2023
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Uploaded by cruzlorraine
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Gourmand and Food Case Study
Lorraine Cruz
School of Public Health, University of Nevada
CHS 755: Health Policy
Dr. Praveen Durgampudi, MD, MPH, MSPH, EPH, FRSPH
September 11, 2023
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Gourmand and Food Case Study
The case study Gourmand and Food – A Fable is an analogy of how the United States
developed their healthcare system. The authors of the fable comment on what they believe
happened throughout the development. They believe that the initial licensing and educational
requirements that were required expanded and increased the availability of service and
specialization. They also suspect that the number of general practitioners decreased while cost
occurred increased. Without reforms of a basic system, adding money and regulations resulted in
the country to collapse according to the fable. There are some flaws with the allegory compared
to the delivery of healthcare in the United States. The first flaw that was found is that the
healthcare system does not give consumers enough knowledge to able to control and to know
how to order things such as procedure, tests or interventions that they may need. The people of
Gourmand have enough control and knowledge to order and consume a restaurant meal. Another
significant difference between the fable and the healthcare system in the United States is the
extreme outcome resulting from the government’s efforts to ensure access to good food to their
community. Overconsumption of restaurant food and lack of productivity in other areas led to the
collapse as well in the fable. In the healthcare system of the United States, it is unlikely that it
would reach such outcome because of the various measures that are taken to prevent the extreme
outcome. These measures consist of cost-sharing measures like copays and deductibles to
discourage unnecessary utilization of healthcare services and insurance companies negotiating
rates with providers. In the healthcare system of the United States the healthcare consumers play
a critical role in patient-centered and patient-driven care. They have the ability to receive
information to educate themselves on their health and care. Consumers should be expected more
responsibility for their own health behaviors and lifestyles; and be active participants in decision
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making regarding their own healthcare treatments. Consumerism is not a barrier to value-based
care but could be viewed as a facilitator if both the consumer and provider have the shared goal
of improving health outcomes (Rangachari, 2023). Consumers should be taking initiative of their
own health as much as the provider. A recommendation to improve Gourmands system is to have
stricter policies. The government believed that nobody should be denied a good meal; therefore,
they declared that those who couldn’t afford the good meals would have their meals paid for by
the government. The paid meals that came from the government were actually paid by other
members, the ones who could afford to eat the meals were asked to pay part of their income into
a pool, which was used to pay the costs incurred by all members that could not afford to eat the
meals. Similar to the Medicare and Medicaid program, which uses the Affordable Care Act to
fund the expansion of the program. The Affordable Care Act uses public dollars to purchase
services in the private sector for beneficiaries, as is done under Medicare and Medicaid
(Meacham, 2021, p.14). The Gourmand government had the right idea of using this similar
method, however, the ones who couldn’t afford the meals should have had stricter policies on
how many meals were allowed per member. This policy and monitoring the number of meals
members were having could have saved the government from its collapse and overconsumption.
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References
Meacham, M. R. (2021).
Longest’s health policymaking in the United States
(7th ed.). Health
Administration Press.
Rangachari, P. (2023). Does healthcare consumerism serve as a barrier or facilitator to the
implementation of value-based primary care? Strategies to promote synergy and success.
Frontiers in Medicine, 10
:1269796. doi: 10.3389/fmed.2023.1269796