Mark Larson, commissioner of Vermont Health Access, ardently maintains that the state’s new health insurance market, called Vermont Health Connect, is electronically connected to the Federal Data Services Hub.
When a Vermonter signs onto Vermont Health Connect, his or her information is supposed to go to this hub, which is supposed to connect to several federal departments and agencies for verification and other purposes.
Linking to the hub is a central requirement for state-run markets under the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. Vermont is one of 16 states that have chosen to run their own Web-based markets.
Darcie Johnston heads the group Vermonters for Health Care Freedom and was the 2012 campaign manager for former Republican gubernatorial candidate Randy Brock. She questions whether Vermont Health Connect has actually connected to the federal data hub.
“Despite repeated requests for a live demo, nobody has been able to get that, and I have intel that tells me they don’t connect,” Johnston said. “On Tuesday (of last week), when people were telling us it was just slow, there were people upstairs saying the servers were down. … I think it’s disingenuous to say you connect and not show it.”
Johnston filed a public records request with Larson last week, asking for all materials related to the state’s connection with the data hub and “any and all correspondence between VHC and the IRS, in order to verify that VHC has met 100% of the required security verifications needed to connect with the IRS.”
Larson says the reason Vermont’s market is not accessible from midnight to 6 a.m. is because it is connected to the federal data hub, and the feds are developing the hub at night.
He provided VTDigger a letter from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that gives the state the authority to connect to the hub. Larson says it’s an indication of the state’s final security clearance.
“The authority to connect is the aggregation of all the federal approvals,” he said. “It is the last final ‘yes, you are completely authorized.’”
But the letter, dated Sept. 27, doesn’t say that the state is actually connected to the hub.
When federal spokespeople were asked about Vermont’s connectivity, they neither denied nor confirmed it.
Larson, however, is steadfast that the state is connected.
“There are people signing up for accounts, and they are asked specific security questions,” Larson said. “Those security questions are based on the information from the federal data hub. … I don’t know how else to explain it. I have heard no information that contradicts our connection to the federal data hub.”
