First Day = Incredible!

For those of you that don't know, I got an Internship this summer working in Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels office! Too bad he didn't run for President... that would've made my experience so different and interesting in a completely different way. Specifically, though, I'm working in the Family and Social Services Administration. I probably won't be seeing too much of my man Mitch - maybe once a week or once every week and a half.

First day at work today... and only one word can describe it - amazing! So what am I doing? I'm asking that rhetorically as much as I'm seriously asking myself. It's difficult to describe, but it comes in the aftermath of the Affordable Care Act (the new health care bill) of March 2010. In my first day there, I've learned so much, chiefly that Indiana is on the edge of some groundbreaking stuff!

So when I got to work (almost 45 minutes early... just to make sure :) ), I met Shawna, who engineered Indiana's Medicaid plan, called the Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP). To my knowledge so far, it's been very successful. It's a high deductible health plan (meaning high deductibles, low premiums) with a Health Savings Account (HSA). Shawna probably handed me about 1000 pages to read, so much so, that I noticeably and awkwardly stumbled out of her office.

When I got to the cubicle the office set up for me, I got started reading. It was extremely disorganized and I instantly felt like I was in way over my head. I mean all I did was take one class on the health care bill. Who was I to think I was some sort of expert!?! Then, Mickey, who seems to be the one I will be reporting to all summer showed up and gave me an organized stack of only about 500 pages to read. Yes! Mickey's been really nice all day and I can tell she'll be an awesome boss.

Next, the entire office went to the first meeting of the day, which was a policy meeting about Indiana's plan for implementing the Exchange. The plan might as well have been in another language for all that I understood of it. Next, I read up for another 45 minutes before a second meeting with some litigators who were to inform our policy group if there was anything unlawful about our plan. Mostly, it seemed like a preliminary meeting, where we just gave them some basic information. Afterwards, I was assigned to read the plan that we were planning on submitting to Congress for approval.

Then, the coolest part of the day! I was assigned to, similar to Prof Ubel's class, make a Presentation that will be given by Shawna to the Governor in a week. The Presentation in my mind was like writing a policy briefing in class. Obviously, it'll be reviewed by at least three or four people before the final powerpoint is seen by Governor Daniels. Overall a great first day, though! I'm excited about tomorrow!