Want to Exchange?

Today was an awesome day. I left to work a little late today and got to work at like 8. That's still earlier than a lotta people but I normally get there at about 7:45. One day I want to arrive at like 7, just to see where I would park in the parking garage then. I always get the 3rd or 4th level and I'm usually the first person to arrive in my department, which is one of the biggest one. Idk, I was thinking about it earlier today and while I was talking about how early I got in, I figured I'd mention it.

Shawna, who if you remember is the main person in charge of health care in Indiana, is on vacation in Greece, so without her here, the job is very slow-paced compared to normal. She's very good at keeping everyone on their toes... something about her persona. Even though I've been relatively busy most days either reading, summarizing articles that usually either need to go to the feds or the Governor, or writing or making presentations based on articles already written (papers or presentations which will look entirely different from my draft by the time they're ready to turn in).

So today I decided to bring in a book I've been reading. It's really academic and way above any of your reading levels, so I'm not sure if I want to go into it. Have you ever seen The Blind Side about the football player? Yup, and the book's even better (if you like some football history thrown in on the side). Really advanced stuff, like Masters level. Wasn't sure if I should even bring it up.

What did I do today that was so interesting? Well, for today, after lunch, at 12:30 is when the fun starts. I had been organizing all these meetings that started today until July 15th or so, and today was the first one. I didn't really know exactly what they were about, but they were called Business Process Meetings... very descriptive.

Basically what business process meetings mean is that we're actually going to be designing Indiana's Exchange, grudgingly abiding by the least number of Obamacare rules we can! Not that I don't like it or do like it for that matter, but Gov. Daniels is not a huge fan - he's written a few articles in the WSJ, so I'm not spilling any secrets. A great analogy that appealed particularly well to me that began the meeting was building a house. You have sub-contractors for all sorts of things - plumbing, walls, electricity, etc. But separately they can't do anything, so we need em all to meet in one place to get a functioning product. So these meetings have people from various departments across the state to ensure every one is at the table.

Today, we discussed who's eligible to enroll in the Exchange and we actually designed something something similar to a program called eHealth, which from what I've heard (I'm going to actually use it tmrw!) and how it was described is pretty much a drop-down menu based on your preferences and data that you provide about yourself and family. It actually is a marketplace as President Obama had meant it to be, tho it is hard to picture it as the Marketplace that I had pictured in my head (which is the one from the 9 min video that Kaiser has about the entire ACA bill).

So to give you a bigger picture, there are three parts to getting the Exchange off the ground - the business part (today's part), the policy part (always a work in progress), and IT (actually allowing users to see it online). We were informed today that our current IT system called ICES is like 25 years old and written in Cobalt, which I guess is a really primitive language. The lady told me that with a can-you-believe-it voice so that why I assume something must be really bad about it. I do know, though, that it can't keep up with what we need it to do for the Exchange. This is a big problem for Indiana. Updates to come hopefully.

The meeting went until 3, when a few of us stayed back to tell the people hosting the meeting (they are hired consultants, I think, and I know they've assisted Wisconsin with their plan as well as headed the Massachusetts Connector [Obamney Care, as Pawlenty described it  - btw, it would have been nice to see him stand up to Romney about it last night and not be such a little wimp about it] in 2006) how we thought it could be better. Our group of 5 people is in charge of the final result, so I think the consultants report to us, which is why we were there at the end.

Funny (by funny, I mean kind of embarrassing) story sidetrack. So, I went to the meeting 20 minutes early to set up because I knew the room was going to be too small, but one lady apparently needed to get there like 25 minutes early... as if she has nothing better to do... your tax dollars at their best. Anyways, I couldn't set up because of that, so I ended up sitting next to one of the consultants, Eric, who I'd met once before (I was sitting in the very back of the conference room). We'd briefly talked the first time. So this time we start talking again, and I realized he has a deep Boston accent. When I say deep, think Matt Damon in The Departed times ten. I'm taking deep Boston. The first time I hear it, I brush it off as nothing but a blip in my hearing. The second time when he says he loved "college" and how big of a Boston Bruins "hockey" fan he is, I start laughing at his accent. Not in a mean way, because it was an awesome accent, but I just broke down laughing. He asked why and I told him I'd never heard an accent that deep Boston. And we kept talking from there. Now that I'm not sure how to end this story, I'm wondering if it was actually funny, or if it was a you-had-to-be-there sorta story. If so, oops :)

Well, now it's night time and I'm have a food baby in my stomach. I ate Chipotle, which tasted amazing like it always does. The after-effect is terrible though. Oh, also I'm running out of some of my supplies now and I'm not sure what to do about it. I need milk for cheerios tmrw morning. Got milk? Want to Exchange what's left of my Chipotle for some milk? Gahh, no idea what I'm going to do about it. Eh, it's tmrw's problem. Goodnight!

Neil