Editor’s note: This commentary is by John McClaughry, the vice president of the Ethan Allen Institute.
On Sept. 12 the nationally known consulting group Gartner Inc. delivered a report to the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The report assessed the operational readiness of the various state health insurance exchanges as the Obamacare-mandated launch date – Oct. 1 – approached.
Vermont Health Connect, the state’s $170 million exchange, is “one of the most functional in the country,” according to Gov. Shumlin. That’s conceivably true, since most if not all of the other exchanges are in serious trouble, but the Gartner report concluded that Vermont Health Connect “should be considered in RED status due to significant risks to meeting the October 1st deadline for Go-Live.”
The statutory deadline of Oct. 1 has long since gone by, but Vermont Health Connect remains essentially inoperative. You can review the Obamacare-approved insurance plans offered for 2014, but you can’t buy one. Kyle Midura of WCAX-TV observed on the Oct. 18 “Vermont This Week” program that site visitors “almost inevitably get an error message.”
Gov. Shumlin first dismissed Vermont Health Connect’s missed opening date as a “nothing burger.” He then said the exchange would be operative by Nov. 1, and that unspecified people were “working 24/7” to get it going. Most recently, he waffled on the Nov. 1 deadline as well, saying it might be ready by Nov. 3. Midura noted that administration officials view this as a “soft deadline” – more a suggestion than a requirement that triggers real-world consequences.
The reason for the monopoly is that Gov. Shumlin and his single payer allies are trying everything possible to lure or force people into the exchange before 2017. On that date state-run, taxpayer-financed Green Mountain Care is supposed to replace all health insurance.
But for many tens of thousands of Vermonters there are real-world consequences to not being able to buy health insurance on Vermont Health Connect. Thanks to an unique monopoly feature of Vermont’s Act 171 (2012), Vermonters who are thwarted by an inoperative exchange site cannot choose to continue their present coverage with their present insurer. This monopoly feature, in force in no other state, applies to currently insured individual purchasers and small business groups of up to 50 employees.
The reason for the monopoly is that Gov. Shumlin and his single payer allies are trying everything possible to lure or force people into the exchange before 2017. On that date state-run, taxpayer-financed Green Mountain Care is supposed to replace all health insurance.
This $3+ billion single payer plan will be financed in large measure with a federal block grant equal to the sum of all the Obamacare tax credits paid on behalf of the people buying through Vermont Health Connect. (GMC will also require an enormous payroll tax increase, as the governor has recently admitted.) Forcing the insured into the exchange will maximize that hoped-for (but by no means assured) federal payment.
Fortunately the 2012 law contains an emergency clause.
On Oct. 22 the Ethan Allen Institute sent a letter to all legislators. It described the situation and concluded: “If these problems are not worked out well before December 31, it seems unavoidable that thousands of Vermonters will wake up on New Year’s Day to find themselves and their families without health insurance coverage – unable to buy what they are required to buy, and with no legal alternative to turn to. But there is a solution.”
“The 2012 legislature … inserted Sec. 41a into Act 171. This section authorizes the Commissioner of Financial Regulation to ‘allow for the extension of a small group and association plan beyond their renewal date in order to ensure a smooth and orderly transition from health plans offered in the small group and association markets in 2013 to health plans offered in the small group market through the Vermont health benefit exchange in 2014.’”
The EAI letter asked legislators to use an enclosed postcard to show their support for the commissioner of financial regulation to invoke this emergency clause “no later than November 18, if by that date Vermont Health Connect is not fully functional.” So far the commissioner has made no public comment on the issue.
In an incisive and scathing article on The Daily Beast (Oct. 22), former Vermont resident Stuart Stevens foresees a “unique train wreck” developing in Vermont, due to a failed exchange designed as an essential gateway to the single payer system.
Stevens concludes: “As this great health insurance experiment proceeds, Vermont bears watching. If this small, healthy state can’t make Obamacare work to a high degree of satisfaction, it doesn’t bode well for more difficult challenges.”
He might have added, “it certainly won’t bode well for Vermonters.”














For all of us with expensive preexisting conditions, a knowledge of healthcare, insurance, politics and people. We understand, we fear, we say hold your horses. That nothing burger could give you a heart attack. Fear based, you sign up or else even if it’s broken, is not a nothing burger. Thanks John for your honest appraisal.
I’d like an apology from my Democrat friends who slammed this legislation home without regard to the consequences.
The dysfunctional website will be the least of our problems, we can get used to higher premiums for less coverage.
#trainwreck
If we wanted to “turn back the clock” on any form of long overdue healthcare reform here in Vermont, Randy Brock would be Governor. In spite of the McClaughry ideology and his minions at Ethan Allen Inst., Vermonters want real health care, not the illusion that health insurance gives. Calling the VT-Connect a train wreck is only an attempt to derail Act. 48 in 2017.
“We already had great healthcare.”
Our healthcare is consistently rated lowest in the developed world. Yet we pay more than any other country on the planet.
“Something run by the goverement!!! This will not be an improvement.”
And all our peer nations have done just that, and seen significant improvement.
Mortality data is not twisted, it is presented; you choose to reject it because it fails to confirm your biases.
“We have the best healthcare system in the world.”
Simply making declarations does not mean they have any factual basis.
“People come to this country to get treated.”
And many leave this country to get treated elsewhere.
“The goverement will not improve your quality of care.”
Since it has done so in all our peer nations, your statement is likely false.
I care about freedom and liberty. I simply make an effort to look at the facts. Clearly something you have not bothered to do.
Please learn how to spell g-o-v-e-r-n-m-e-n-t. And while you at it, calm down and think of others – life is short.
As a small business owner, I welcome the exchange. For a cost lower than my 2012 policy for my family, I’ll get more coverage. As a software developer, I understand how there can be problems with the initial version of a large project like the state’s website. Given the simplicity of the choices in Vermont – we after all only have two insurance companies, just as before – the state’s website problems should be solved quickly. I’m not worried.
This administration is all about saying one thing and then claiming they meant something else later.
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Remember the $590 million dollars in “savings” that were promised? All the legislature had to do was pass the bill. As soon as the bill is passed, the “savings” were replaced by “increases.”
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Remember the governor was supposed to define how single payer was to be funded? But then ignored the legal deadline and handed the ball off to the legislature.
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Then there was the October 1st deadline. Then the November 1st deadline. Then the November 3rd deadline.
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The real issue will be the increased cost for many Vermonters. Some people will sign up for the new plans but many will not. The administration will then retreat from earlier statements made about how many people will enroll.
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Watching these clowns reminds me of the old WWF. They put on a great show but it’s not real.
“Let no fear go unexploited” seems to be the motto for this commentary.
Of course, paper applications always remain a possibility, and are, I believe, available through the web site.
Not to mention that people are managing to buy insurance online through the web site despite the problems.
Not to mention that there are about two months left before 2014, and there are many sources of help (navigators, brokers) available for people trying to use the exchange.
The fact is that instituting new computer systems rarely goes well, in government or in private business. I lived through two of them at a corporations, and both went pretty much the way the exchanges are going across the country.
The complexity of the Affordable care Act is undoubtedly responsible for much of the technical glitches. I hope people understand that Vermont’s publicly financed universal care plan, slated for implementation in 2017 , would do away with most of those complications.
Publicly financed (read massive tax increases) single payer will mean that employers and working peole, already struggling to provide healthcare to their employees and families, will also bear the cost of funding health care for everyone else. And that health care includes high deductibles and co-payments. Biggest losers will be public sector employees, Unionized workers and the middle class (or what’s left of it).
State employees and retired state employees are currently enjoying TWO FULL MONTHS with no premiums to pay! This is saving over 15% for plan members AND VERMONT TAX PAYERS! In 2014 we will AGAIN,,,, HAVE NO PREMIUM INCREASE!! That’s more great news for Vermont tax payers. This self-insured plan was designed as a fully collaborative effort between the VSEA and the Dean Administration. Governor Dean and state employees worked as equal partners designing a plan that would save everyone money and provide good benefits.
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What legislators should be looking at is: how are state employees and retired state employees together, LOWERING their health care costs and providing outstanding benefits at the same time?
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The current administration is ignoring this and doesn’t want to use the state employee plan as a model for universal care plan in the future. WHY NOT? The average age of state employees is 47. The average of a retired state employee is much older. Doesn’t anyone at GMCB or the administration want to know how such an older population of folks has decreasing health care costs with good benefits? Apparently not.
Meh. The technological shortcomings of this implementation are a SIDESHOW. They will be resolved.
The REAL issue is that true out-of-pocket health care costs for many working Vermonters are going to INCREASE as a result of the exchange. That is the long-lasting and truly UNFORGIVABLE outcome from this so-called “reform”.
@ John Smith: You hit it on the screws. The real issue is cost. Cost to low and middle income Vermonters. It’s not all about premiums either, as you stated it’s the high out of pocket costs. The administration wants the discussion to be about the computer or the premiums or ANYTHING BUT, the high out of pocket costs. Whopping deductibles and max out of pocket limits will mean people will delay getting treatment. This will result in some folks needing very expensive care later because they won’t be able to afford care with the new insurance. It won’t be most folks but it doesn’t take many high cost cases to drive up premium rates in the future. The administration doesn’t discuss this or acknowledge this. We are spending millions on a political spin machine to keep the out of pocket costs out of the press and out of any public discussion.