{"id":1115,"date":"2011-08-24T16:56:01","date_gmt":"2011-08-24T20:56:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/on_the_front_lines_of_the_culture_wars\/?p=1115"},"modified":"2011-08-23T11:55:55","modified_gmt":"2011-08-23T15:55:55","slug":"california-math-whiz-credits-god-for-billion-dollar-discovery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/on_the_front_lines_of_the_culture_wars\/2011\/08\/california-math-whiz-credits-god-for-billion-dollar-discovery.html","title":{"rendered":"California math whiz credits God for billion-dollar discovery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Insurance customers in California\u00a0should\u00a0thank God for\u00a0David Axene. A scheduled\u00a039 percent rate hike was averted by\u00a0the mathematician who from his hospital bed discovered a major insurer had made serious errors in predicting its costs.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
David Axene<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The 60-year-old will tell you candidly\u00a0that he couldn\u2019t have done it without God\u2019s help.<\/p>\n

\u201cDavid Axene ,\u201d writes Duke Helfand of the Los Angeles Times,<\/em> \u201cwas flat on his back in a hospital bed with a swollen left leg. His kidneys had shut down. His blood pressure had plunged. Doctors pumped him with potent antibiotics to stave off a deadly infection<\/p>\n

\u201cYet there he was sifting through spreadsheets on his laptop, cradling his cellphone to his ear, waving off doctors to finish another conference call.\u201d<\/p>\n

California\u2019s top insurance watchdogs had asked Axene to go through a mountain of paperwork from Anthem Blue Cross, trying to find flaws in the company\u2019s request for a massive rate increase. Anthem\u2019s plan to impose higher premiums had\u00a0incurred the wrath of California\u00a0consumers and politicians. President Obama\u00a0heard of the furor and cited Anthem\u2019s planned increases as he promoted his healthcare plan.<\/p>\n

California insurance regulators are required by law to accept\u00a0insurance company\u00a0rates as long as\u00a0a company can show it used at least 70 cents of every dollar in premiums to pay medical claims. So, Axene was asked to look over\u00a0the Anthem Blue Cross\u00a0numbers.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Blue Cross logo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

He prayed. His is a deep, personal faith. He\u2019s a preacher\u2019s son. Raised believing in the importance of faith, love and hard work, he says God blessed him at an early age with a natural gift for numbers. He dreamed of becoming an aeronautical engineer, maybe for NASA. However, in the early 1970s, jobs were scarce for college graduates with degrees in physics and applied mathematics. Axene got a job at a gas station. A friend told him Travelers Insurance Company was hiring. He applied for a sales position, but the recruiter\u2019s\u00a0assessment didn’t exactly fill him with hope: “Axene, you couldn\u2019t sell your way out of a wet paper bag.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, he asked if Axene had ever considered becoming a health actuary \u2013 using his math skills to calculate insurance rates by evaluating life expectancies, medical histories and other risk factors.<\/p>\n

Axene began a career with some of the nation\u2019s most influential accounting and actuarial firms, including Ernst & Young. There, he supervised 45 employees.\u00a0However, in 2003,\u00a0Ernst & Young downsized, leaving Axene, then 53 years old, unemployed. He started picking up freelance jobs.<\/p>\n

When he got the call from the California regulators, he\u00a0sorted though more than 1,000 pages of documents and spreadsheets in search of errors. In the midst of the investigation, he became sick, but still logged in 66 hours of work from a hospital bed while recovering from surgery.<\/p>\n

Finally, he found a key error. Anthem had double-counted a critical factor and made a handful of other mistakes. The discoveries had big implications. Anthem had to withdraw its rate increase.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Axene\u00a0says he relied not only on his math skills but also on God.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe prayed for insight and wisdom each morning before launching into another round of numbers sleuthing, often drawing inspiration from a worn Bible he keeps in his office,\u201d reports Helfand.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m one of those crazy people who believes that God listens to our prayers,\u201d Axene says. \u201cWhen you\u2019re a numbers guy and things don\u2019t appear to be consistent, it annoys you.”<\/p>\n

So, when he caught the mistakes, \u201cit was sort of like finding the Holy Grail. It opened up a big can of worms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now new clients are calling. Axene is thinking of expanding.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe slew the giant,\u201d says Anthony Wright, executive director of Health Access California, a consumer group in Sacramento. \u201cIt was David versus Goliath, except David was armed with a calculator rather than a slingshot.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Insurance customers in California\u00a0should\u00a0thank God for\u00a0David Axene. A scheduled\u00a039 percent rate hike was averted by\u00a0the mathematician who from his hospital bed discovered a major insurer had made serious errors in predicting its costs. The 60-year-old will tell you candidly\u00a0that he couldn\u2019t have done it without God\u2019s help. \u201cDavid Axene ,\u201d writes Duke Helfand of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[83,71,12],"tags":[128,383,127,377],"class_list":["post-1115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspirational","category-news","category-prayer","tag-axene","tag-inspirational","tag-insurance","tag-prayer"],"yoast_head":"\nCalifornia math whiz credits God for billion-dollar discovery - On the Front Lines of the Culture Wars<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/on_the_front_lines_of_the_culture_wars\/2011\/08\/california-math-whiz-credits-god-for-billion-dollar-discovery.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"California math whiz credits God for billion-dollar discovery - On the Front Lines of the Culture Wars\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Insurance customers in California\u00a0should\u00a0thank God for\u00a0David Axene. 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The 60-year-old will tell you candidly\u00a0that he couldn\u2019t have done it without God\u2019s help. \u201cDavid Axene ,\u201d writes Duke Helfand of the…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/on_the_front_lines_of_the_culture_wars\/2011\/08\/california-math-whiz-credits-god-for-billion-dollar-discovery.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"On the Front Lines of the Culture Wars\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-08-24T20:56:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-08-23T15:55:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/on_the_front_lines_of_the_culture_wars\/files\/2011\/04\/david-axene.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"California math whiz credits God for billion-dollar discovery - On the Front Lines of the Culture Wars","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/on_the_front_lines_of_the_culture_wars\/2011\/08\/california-math-whiz-credits-god-for-billion-dollar-discovery.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"California math whiz credits God for billion-dollar discovery - On the Front Lines of the Culture Wars","og_description":"Insurance customers in California\u00a0should\u00a0thank God for\u00a0David Axene. 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