Wow - I've learned a lot!

Hey guys,

So, it's been a few days since my last post. Nothing too interesting happened yesterday, though I did find out that people work from home, which was interesting. Shawna works from home two days a week, and both Cady and Doggy (if you haven't been able to tell by now, all four of the people I work with have made up names on this blog, you know, just to make it more interesting :) ),  who you haven't met yet, but are both pretty awesome, work from home one day a week.

Today, though, I was constantly on the move. I usually (by usually, I mean a grand total of three days so far) get to work earlier than everyone, just cause I got into a good rhythm. I started catching up on some reading. Remember those 500+ pages. Yup, just finished those and another 40 pager got dumped on tonight's plate! But the reading is interesting and I've learned more in these three days about national health care policy as well as Indiana state health care policy than I ever could've imagined and I'm loving it!

In fact, today, while looking up one of the countless words I'm always researching (b/c I've never seen half of the words and acronyms that are used), I decided I might try to write a book, which would just be a glossary of all health care words I learn this summer. The problem, though, is that all my definitions would be plagiarized off the Internet, but at least anyone in the health care business who doesn't know something could look it all up in one place. The plagiarism tidbit is the only problem. Any ideas!?!

Another thing I realized today is how many hats (cue to Admay!) you really need in a business place. I am working with the policy team to form what will become Indiana's Exchange, but there is also a business aspect and IT aspect. Sounds easy, right? Ummm, nope. Under each department, there are legal aspects, computer aspects (mostly IT), and actuarial aspects (money!). There are so many aspects of the bill to keep track of that just learning the ACA (Obama's bill) back and front wouldn't be enough. You need to know the ins and outs of the IRS (yup, taxes), everything about health care premiums, copayments, coinsurance, deductibles, and many other words (glossary anyone!?!), and how to calculate mathematically if all these words added together ends up with a positive bottom line. Pretty crazy how much there is to keep track of. But there's always someone who specializes in every little aspect. It's kind of amazing how many different tasks there are and how people specialize in the littlest things!

One thing that I love is how many question marks I have in my notebook. It might be more than I had in APUSH class with Coach Lopez (cue Munster High School!?!). Eh, prolly not, seeing as he just put question marks after everything on the board. haha, but tomorrow, I'm gonna have like a million different things to ask Mickey, who along with me, is going to be the only person at work tomorrow.

Another aspect of policy work I have found very interesting is the lack of males! And I thought we dominated everything! no, no, just kidding, but males really are sparse! The four main people I work with are all females and when we have large meetings, the only males I've seen are the math actuarial guys who sit in their office and do a bunch of calculations and a few lawyers who told us how many legal problems our bill would face. Interesting, just pointing it out.

So, today... we had two meetings today. One was a phone interview with "the people from Utah." Yup, that's all I knew going into the meeting. But that was the first meeting that I understood maybe 75% of what was going on! Utah has a new health care system of defined contributions (glossary w/o Wiki? here goes... defined contributions would be if, instead of an employer giving an employee one health plan which many experts/employees don't like cause it's a "one size fits all" plan that often doesn't cover each employee's specific needs, a defined contributions plan gives an employee a certain amount of money and there would be an Exchange offering various health plans, which an employee could choose from and acquire the plan that best fits their needs, whew) and I had looked it up and understood it and it was awesome! Oh ya, while I remember, I've pretty much been sworn to secrecy about Indiana's plan, so all you friends (yes, currently, all one of you) working for CNN, it's not gonna happen!!

The second meeting focused all its attention on SPAs or various state planned amendments (?? - I think?, see, a glossary would be useful!). Didn't understand almost 95% of the meeting, so I was pretty much a blob :(

By the end of the day, everyone was getting tired and talking about the weekend already. Though I'm technically not assigned homework, I ask for projects as much as I can, both because I enjoy the work and to keep me busy at night. Tonight, I have to look through that long 40 pager and then maybe start a defined contributions update paper. Oh ya, I really have to get all that done tonight just because I already know of a CHIP paper (you know, like chips ahoy, just in all CAPS... no, CHIP is the children health insurance plan that all states have, i think, and that is partially subsidized by the federal government, i think, and that is only for people below a certain FPL, oh my bad, that's federal poverty level, for you!) that I have to read tmrw.

Oh ya, almost forgot! I met some of the other interns the other day and they all seem really nice... again almost all girls, but hey, who's complaining!? We're supposed to go on some trip this upcoming Tuesday and hopefully we start hanging out as the summer goes on. Most of them go to Indy schools or Purdue. Surprisingly, no IU kids?

Overall another great day, though. I'm at Barnes and Noble right now and I still have to read that 40 pager. Hopefully, I can at least start it before the game tonight, cause after it starts tonight, nothing's gonna get done! Let's go Mavs... or any team not the Heat!


Neil