David Anderson – Page 243

About David Anderson

I'm a research associate at Duke University Margolis Center. I used to be Richard Mayhew, a mid-level bureaucrat at UPMC Health Plan. I started writing here and have not found a reason to stop.

Entries by David Anderson

Merely a flesh wound

January 11, 2014 /43 Comments/in All we want is life beyond the thunderdome, Election 2016, Mayhew On Insurance, World's Best Healthcare (If You Can Afford It) /by David Anderson

When the right wing faux brouhaha blew up on keeping crappy plans for another year, I thought the proposed set of Democratic work-arounds would work in defusing the political issue with minimal long term damage to the risk pools: Date change of grandfather status from day of PPACA being signed into law to 12/31/13 for […]

Using a bigger net

January 10, 2014 /34 Comments/in Mayhew On Insurance, Show Us on the Doll Where the Invisible Hand Touched You, The Party of Fiscal Responsibility /by David Anderson

Right now, one of my company’s competitors is running a series of radio ads. The ads tout that in the small and medium group market segments, 90% of their groups renewed last year. The implication is that 90% of their customers/decision makers are happy, so your small company should buy their product. Being an employee […]

Risk aversion, ERs and climbing toddlers

January 10, 2014 /57 Comments/in Glibertarianism, Mayhew On Insurance, World's Best Healthcare (If You Can Afford It) /by David Anderson

Last night as my wife and I were relaxing after dinner and before bath time, we saw Kid #2 toddle to the bathroom. Bump, thump, bump…. Kid #2 lugged the foot stool out of the bathroom and dragged it across the living room. Kid #1 decided to tell Mom and Dad that her little brother was breaking […]

When procrastination lost its fun, you’re fucking lazy

January 8, 2014 /50 Comments/in Mayhew On Insurance /by David Anderson

The enrollment model for Obamacare is deadline driven. The pre-launch model was that there would be early interest and shopping but very little buying in October, a bit more buying in November as people who knew that they were in desperate situations decided to knock out a stresser by purchasing a plan that would be […]

Medicaid leak-through

January 6, 2014 /21 Comments/in Uncategorized /by David Anderson

On Saturday, I noted that there was a Medicaid enrollment file issue. Approximately 100,000 people on the Exchanges had thought they had enrolled in Medicaid or CHIP but the federal files had not properly transferred to the states to process the enrollments. At least half of the people impacted lived in either Ohio or Pennsylvania. […]

It’s not old, its retro

January 4, 2014 /20 Comments/in Mayhew On Insurance /by David Anderson

There have been a couple of operational glitches during the first week of the Exchange policies going live. Betty catches the problem that healthcare.gov is having problems dealing with changes in family situations, most notably adding a baby to a family’s policy. The bigger issue is a Medicaid enrollment file problem as the Washington Post […]

Good News Everybody

January 2, 2014 /55 Comments/in Mayhew On Insurance, Yes We Did /by David Anderson

I was on call for the go-live but was able to take a couple of days off work. I got no calls, and my e-mail back-log has only minor implementation concerns such as whether or not Doc X is in Mayhew Product Y as a new member wants to make sure she can see him […]