The Obama administration is hoping the same data-intensive strategy that won the election will drive uninsured young men to buy insurance through the marketplaces that are launching this fall. Ezra Klein and Sarah Kliff wrote an excellent article in the Washington Post outlining what they call Obama’s last campaign. David Simas is in charge of crunching the numbers to get the crucial young male customers turned out to buy health insurance through the coming marketplaces.
This, then, is the crux of Obamacare’s challenge: Can the federal government persuade young, healthy people to buy health insurance?
Simas is focusing his formidable analytical resources on understanding this group. He begins clicking through a Powerpoint that holds reams of data on these young adults. “What do we know about them?” he says. “They’re overwhelmingly male.” Click. “They’re majority nonwhite.” Click. “One out of every three lives in California, Florida or Texas.” Click. “We have census maps breaking this down into the smallest geographic units.”
A couple more clicks and Simas is showing which television channels they like to watch (Spike TV, among others), which social-media platforms they use (Twitter, Facebook) and who they listen to (“No surprise. It’s mom.”). “We can figure out the message that works best for this group,” Simas says.
In addition to all the logistical challenges to this effort, the administration faces an opposition effort as strong as the Romney campaign.
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Munck Wilson Mandala Partner Greg Howison shared his perspective on some of the legal ramifications around AI, IP, connected devices and the data they generate, in response to emailed questions.
The administration needs to build more insurance marketplaces than they ever expected, and create an unprecedented IT infrastructure that lets the federal government’s computers seamlessly talk to the (often ancient) systems used in state Medicaid offices. They need to fend off repeal efforts from congressional Republicans — like Wednesday’s vote to delay the individual mandate — and somehow work with red-state bureaucracies that want to see Obamacare fail. And they can’t escape the fact that the law, three years after passage, remains stubbornly unpopular.
The post also touches on the complexity of the HIT work involved with launching the exchanges.
The construction of the federal government’s massive data hub, an unprecedented trove of income, citizenship and personal information about millions of Americans. This is the engine that will power federal decisions about who qualifies for which health law programs. If it doesn’t work, neither does the rest of the health care law.
Klein and Kliff also interviewed consultants from Deloitte and Xerox about the health insurance exchanges. Even the most tuned-in health-care consultants have trouble predicting whether the federal government can get the law off the ground.
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At the Abarca Forward conference earlier this year, George Van Antwerp, managing director at Deloitte, discussed how social determinants of health and a personalized member experience can improve medication adherence and health outcomes.
Deloitte’s Cheryl Smith said the technology that powers the health law is a black box. Kevin Walsh, a senior executive at Xerox, is working with multiple states on health plan implementation. When he wants to explain the administration’s massive challenge, “he uses a one-page flowchart that outlines eight steps, six government agencies and the back-end technology involved in getting someone enrolled.”
The post – which is worth every minute of your time to read the nine pages — closes with a little historical context about another recent ambitious effort to expand healthcare.
Months before it launched in 2006, Medicare Part D was less popular than today’s Affordable Care Act — 21 percent of the public viewed it favorably while 66 percent did not understand how it would work.
[Image from flickr user Charles Fettinger]
