On February 8, 2016

Vermont Health Connect backlog persists after Jan. 31 deadline

By Erin Mansfield, VTDigger.org

Gov. Peter Shumlin’s health care reform team told the House Health Care Committee on Thursday, Jan. 28, about bigger challenges with Vermont Health Connect than were previously reported.

Lawrence Miller, the chief of health care reform, said the number of changes to customer accounts waiting to be handled by the state’s health insurance exchange peaked at 5,700 on Jan. 25. Miller characterized the 5,700 pending changes of circumstance as an “inventory,” instead of a “backlog,” which has been the term of choice for the governor, lawmakers and other stakeholders over the past year to describe the problem.

The Shumlin administration provided the new numbers at the request of the House Health Care Committee, which has decided to bring Shumlin’s health care reform team in to testify at an indefinite number of weekly hearings to determine whether the state should move to the federal exchange.

The administration reported in November that 32,761 people were enrolled in commercial health insurance through Vermont Health Connect. At the Thursday hearing, the administration said the number is fewer than 30,000. Blue Cross continues to insure about 90 percent of those people, and MVP Health Care, a New York-based company, insures the rest.

By signing up for health coverage, those who previously did not have insurance will avoid having to pay the individual shared responsibility fee when they file their federal taxes. This federal fee for not having health insurance increases in 2016 and the typical uninsured individual will pay $695 when they file their taxes in spring 2017, according to a press release from Department of Vermont Health Access. Those with higher than average incomes will pay more of a penalty– 2.5 percent of their household income above the filing threshold – and could have to pay for all of their own health care costs on top of that.

Some uninsured individuals and families will even find that it’s cheaper to buy a basic health plan than to pay the fee, the release explained. A couple earning $40,000, for example, could find a basic couple plan on Vermont Health Connect for less than $50 per month, or $600 for the year. If they don’t get insurance, however, they could pay a federal fee of nearly $1,400.

Vermont Health Connect’s Plan Comparison Tool has attracted over 10,000 visits in the last six weeks, showing customers the financial help they qualify for and helping them estimate the out-of-pocket costs of various plan options.

Additionally, over the last several months, the administration has been moving about 143,000 Medicaid patients over to the exchange.

Miller said the state has begun to contact 10,000 households a month that have at least one person enrolled in a form of Medicaid in order to renew and revise their coverage. He said it would be a long time before the state has a statistically significant estimate of how many people were on Medicaid who shouldn’t have been.

Miller said many of the bumps experienced this year during open enrollment happened when his team had to turn off the online change of circumstance function because a piece of software code that the vendor Exeter Group gave the state was not ready to be deployed by Dec. 31. The company went out of business “literally overnight” in October, his team said.

Do you want to submit feedback to the editor?

Send Us An Email!

Related Posts

A new law opens up unpaid leave for Vermont workers 

June 18, 2025
By Charlotte Oliver/VTDigger Starting July 1, a new law is set to expand unpaid parental leave for Vermonters — and for the first time, guarantee employees can take off work after the death of a family member. It also defines family relationships more broadly under the law, naming its intention to equitably include LGBTQ+ Vermonters.  The law is…

Scott signs Vermonters Feeding Vermonters program into law

June 18, 2025
Vermont Foodbank applauded the work of the Legislature and Governor Phil Scott for the passage and signing of bill H.167, into law on May 27 creating Act 34 of 2025 to establish a Vermonters Feeding Vermonters grant program at the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets. With food and economic insecurity increasing in recent years, this commitment will help…

Amphibian road mortality drops by over 80% due to wildlife underpasses

June 18, 2025
By Joshua Brown, UVM Editor’s note: This story is via Community News Service in partnership with Vermont State University Castleton. A new UVM-led study shows that wildlife underpass tunnels dramatically reduce deaths of frog, salamanders and other amphibians migrating across roads. Frogs, salamanders, and other amphibians around the world face mounting threats from a devastating fungus,…

Vermont-NEA wants to get more educators into politics

June 18, 2025
As lawmakers and the governor continue to insist on “doing something” about education before the end of next week, the state’s largest union will begin training educators to become elected officials. “Nobody knows the needs of students and those who work in our schools better than my fellow educators,” said Don Tinney, a high school English teacher…