Pierce A. Whitham: Health Policy, Operations & Analytics

About

I work in verifications and compliance at ID.me, reviewing sensitive identity and eligibility documentation against federal and state requirements at high volume. That experience grounds my interest in how healthcare policy actually gets operationalized. Alongside that, I'm pursuing a Master of Public Health at the University of Maryland, concentrating in health policy, health systems management, and healthcare operations.

My graduate and volunteer work centers on Medicaid: enrollment trends, financing mechanisms, coverage gaps, and the health-equity impact of state-level policy choices. The projects below are the center of this site. My day-to-day roles are summarized further down.

Policy & Systems Projects

Graduate policy analysis and health-systems work on Medicaid financing, coverage gaps, and health-system performance. Every project below follows the same four-part structure: the problem, the approach, what the evidence showed, and what I'd recommend doing about it.

Policy Presentation

Medicaid Expansion: Legal and Ethical Challenges of States Opting Out

Response to H.R. 1 funding uncertainty

The Problem: A decade after NFIB v. Sebelius made Medicaid expansion optional, roughly 1.4 million people remain in the coverage gap in non-expansion states, with no clear legal path forward for closing it.
My Approach: Reviewed federal Medicaid financing law and three legal levers (Section 1115 waivers, ballot initiatives, and per-capita caps), assessing each against federalism constraints, CMS approval requirements, and political feasibility.
Key Findings: Expansion states cover ~20M people (~25% of Medicaid enrollment) and 44% of expansion adults live with a chronic condition; existing incentives (90% match, ARPA bonus, trigger laws) haven't been enough to move remaining holdout states.
Recommendations: Pair a waiver-based expansion strategy (modeled on Wisconsin's BadgerCare) with temporary federal match increases and trigger-law protections, offering a lower-risk, incremental path for holdout states.

View original slides (PowerPoint)

Policy Presentation

Hospital Closures in Rural America: Rural Community Hospital Preparedness

Response to rising rural hospital closures

The Problem: Over 30% of U.S. rural hospitals are at risk of closing, and it's unclear whether existing federal support programs address the root causes.
My Approach: Built an access / quality / cost framework and evaluated HRSA's SHIP and FLEX programs against GAO, CHQPR, and KFF data on rural hospital closures and financial performance.
Key Findings: Median distance to inpatient care rose from 3.4 to 23.9 miles (2012–2018) after closures; only ~30% of Critical Access Hospitals have ICUs; 44% of rural hospitals ran negative margins in 2023 vs. 35% of urban hospitals.
Recommendations: Existing technical-assistance funding can't offset chronic underpayment: move toward payment-model reform (e.g., CHQPR's Patient-Centered Payment system, ~$3.7B/year, ~0.1% of U.S. healthcare spending) that pays for standby capacity, not just volume.

View original slides (PowerPoint)

Policy Presentation

Semaglutide for Medicare Beneficiaries: Preventive and Economic Implications

Response to CMS tabling AOM coverage

The Problem: Medicare currently covers semaglutide only for non-obesity indications, while a parallel legislative push would open coverage as an anti-obesity medication, with unresolved cost implications.
My Approach: Synthesized clinical/cost-effectiveness modeling (Dayer et al., 2025) against CBO's 10-year federal budget projections for anti-obesity-medication coverage.
Key Findings: Modeled use could avert ~39,000 cardiovascular events and net $715M in Medicare savings over 10 years under baseline assumptions, but CBO projects $35B in net federal spending (2026–2034) if broad coverage is authorized.
Recommendations: Treat coverage as a long-horizon investment: near-term costs likely exceed savings, but the calculus improves as uptake, price competition, and preventive effects compound, so coverage design should account for that lag.

View original slides (PowerPoint)

Policy Analysis

Assessing the Economic and Political Feasibility of Medicaid Expansion in Florida

Response to North Carolina's expansion success

The Problem: Florida remains one of the largest non-expansion states, with political leadership resistant to expansion despite majority public support: is expansion actually feasible?
My Approach: Comparative policy analysis benchmarking Florida against Arizona and North Carolina (two demographically and politically similar expansion states), using KFF, GAO, and state budget-office data.
Key Findings: Arizona's expansion was associated with a 6% mortality-rate decline (2014–2017); ~789,800 Floridians (a third of the state's uninsured non-elderly adults) would qualify; the projected match obligation ($516M, 2020–24) is small next to $11.5B in averted uncompensated-care costs.
Recommendations: Florida could feasibly adopt expansion if paired with a fiscal "trigger law," as Arizona and North Carolina did, capturing federal funding and health gains while protecting the state budget if match rates fall.

View original document (Word)

Literature Review

Review: "Expanding Medicaid for Undocumented Immigrants: A Path to Better Coverage and Population Health"

Response to Bustamante, Chowdhury & Ortega (2025), AJPH

The Problem: Immigrant populations, documented and undocumented, face far higher uninsurance rates than the general population despite contributing significantly to the labor force and economy.
My Approach: Critical review of Bustamante, Chowdhury & Ortega (2025, AJPH), evaluating their case-study evidence from California and Oregon's Medicaid-like coverage expansions for immigrants.
Key Findings: ~50% of undocumented and ~25% of documented immigrants are uninsured, versus ~10% of the general population; only California offers "full scope" Medicaid to eligible immigrants, while 13 states plus D.C. offer partial coverage.
Recommendations: The article's economic argument (immigrants make up over a third of the labor force in some industries) strengthens the public-health case for coverage; further research should track health-outcome changes in states that have expanded coverage.

View original document (Word)

Technical Projects

Product work built and shipped with Claude Code and GitHub.

Product Development

Pincher: Healthcare Navigation Platform

Personal Project · Active Development

The Problem: Preventive healthcare can be difficult to navigate for people who don't have an established entry point into the healthcare system.
My Approach: Designed and developed a consumer-facing healthcare navigation application using Claude Code and GitHub, combining preference-based recommendations with preventive-care guidance.
Status: In active development and not yet publicly released; built and iterated using Claude Code with version control on GitHub.

Selected Skills

Each skill links to the project or role where I used it.

Medicaid Policy Virginia Medicaid Dashboard

Strategic Planning MedStar Health Project

Data Visualization UMD Badge + Virginia Health Disparities Analysis

Process Improvement ID.me Engineering Collaboration

Healthcare Operations ID.me

GitHub Portfolio Repository

Claude Code Pincher: Healthcare Navigation Platform

Excel Policy & Budget Models

Data Visualizations

UMD Data Visualization Builder Badge

More going up here as they're finished.

Heart Disease Mortality in Virginia Reflects Both Racial and Geographic Disparities

County-level analysis of CDC heart disease mortality data shows rural Virginia counties running 36–38% higher age-adjusted mortality than urban counties, while Black Virginians experience mortality rates roughly 3.1 times higher than Hispanic Virginians, evidence that both place and race shape cardiovascular health outcomes across the state.

View visualization

CDC heart disease mortality data (2021–2023); rurality classifications via the Virginia Open Data Portal. Visualization and analysis by Pierce Whitham, 2025. Open full size

Protecting Virginia Medicaid

A three-part interactive series built in Tableau: where funding cuts would hit hardest, how vulnerability tracks with coverage, and how to act.

01 · Target Funding by County

Maps Virginia's Social Vulnerability Index against Medicaid enrollment by county to help target funding and outreach where it's needed most.

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Built in Tableau Public. Open on Tableau Public

02 · Vulnerability and Medicaid Coverage

Compares county-level social vulnerability with Medicaid coverage rates across Virginia.

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Built in Tableau Public. Open on Tableau Public

03 · Contact Your Representative

A lookup tool connecting Virginians with their state representatives to advocate for protecting Medicaid funding.

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Built in Tableau Public. Open on Tableau Public

Professional Development

What I'm building and picking up, season to season.

More to come.

Summer 2026

Built this healthcare policy portfolio site: domain, DNS, and Render hosting through content and design.
Learned Git/GitHub workflows for version control and deployment.
Began developing Pincher, a healthcare app project.

Spring 2026

Completed the University of Maryland Data Visualization Builder Badge.
Presented at the Health Research Exchange Symposium, University of Birmingham.

Fall 2025

Learned SQL basics.

Summer 2025

Learned Tableau.

Experience

Member Support Representative

June 2021 – Present

ID.me, Verifications Department · McLean, VA

Live-video identity verification and compliance review of sensitive eligibility documentation at high volume; coordinate with technical and compliance teams on complex, cross-functional cases.

Facilities Technician

August 2020 – June 2021

TTM Technologies, Mask Manufacturing Department · Sterling, VA

Coordinated production and PPE distribution logistics across North American facilities, maintaining OSHA and public-health compliance during peak COVID-19 demand.

Service & Presentations

Dec 2024 – Present

Policy & Advocacy Committee

Virginia Public Health Association

Medicaid enrollment, funding, and health-equity analysis; built analytical dashboards for stakeholders.

Jul 2024 – Present

Level 3 MRC Volunteer

Virginia Medical Reserve Corps

Communicable disease prevention outreach and public health preparedness for vulnerable populations.

April 2026

Graduate Health Systems Presenter

Health Research Exchange Symposium, University of Birmingham

Strategic-planning presentation on healthcare operational efficiency using a MedStar Health case study; co-facilitated a postgraduate workshop.

Education

Master of Public Health (MPH)

University of Maryland, School of Public Health · College Park, MD

Expected June 2028

Public Health Practice and Policy · Cumulative GPA: 4.0

Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Anthropology

Southern New Hampshire University, School of Social Sciences · Manchester, NH

January 2024 · Summa Cum Laude

Cumulative GPA: 4.0

Resumes

Tailored versions highlighting different areas of my experience.

Health Policy

Emphasizes Medicaid policy analysis, health systems research, and graduate coursework.

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Healthcare Administration & Operations

Emphasizes healthcare operations, compliance, and process-improvement experience.

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Government Program Analysis

Emphasizes program analysis, regulatory compliance, and data-driven policy evaluation.

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Get in Touch

Alexandria, VA. Open to conversations on Medicaid policy, health systems, and public health operations.

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