The second open enrollment period for buying health insurance through Vermont Health Connect is going well for new customers.
The system, however, is still suffering with a hangover from its rocky first year. Hundreds of customers, for example, have mistakenly received collections notices, sometimes for thousands of dollars.
“Enrollment, as far as I know, is going fine. The problems that we’ve been hearing about are the existing ones with 2014 plans, the billing system and changes of circumstance,” said Trinka Kerr, director of Legal Aid’s Office of the Health Care Advocate, addressing a legislative oversight committee Thursday.
Existing customers continue to have issues with billing, while others are having problems stemming from the backlog of change requests the state was unable to resolve before open enrollment, which are still being processed manually.
Kerr’s office has recently taken numerous calls from outraged consumers who have received collections notices from MVP Health Care, one of two carriers participating in the exchange. MVP covers less than 10 percent of the 32,000 plans sold on through the exchange’s individual market.
State officials and an MVP spokesman confirmed that close to 500 people have recently received notices of an overdue balance. In at least one case, Kerr said, the insurer sent a notice seeking $6,000 in overdue charges disputed by the customer.
The notices are part of MVP’s normal process for handling accounts that fall into arrears, said company spokesman Jon Pierce, but no accounts have actually been sent out to collections.
Accounts are going into arrears for multiple reasons, said Lawrence Miller, chief of health care reform.
The process is set up so that Vermont Health Connect enrolls people and determines their eligibility for subsidies. People’s monthly premiums are sent from the exchange to its premium processor Benaissance, which adds the subsidy and forwards payments in electronic files to the carrier.
Until recently, Benaissance would hold people’s payments until the 16th of the month so the subsidy could be added. But that was creating problems for the insurers so the state asked that the payments be forwarded immediately, with the subsidies added later, Miller said.
Another problem is that some people attempting to cancel their insurance policies ended up in the backlog of requested coverage changes. Going into open enrollment, the state still had a backlog of 5,300 unresolved change requests relating to 2014 coverages.
Some people who believed they canceled their coverage months ago are receiving collection notices that are sometimes for thousands of dollars, according to Kerr.
Miller said his team will continue to work with MVP and the affected customers to resolve the issues that are causing their accounts to be overdue.
MVP won’t send the overdue bills to collections if it appears they could have been generated in error, Pierce said.
“If there are other issues or barriers we’ll continue to work with people,” he said.
MVP is getting calls from frustrated consumers as well, Pierce said, and is doing what it can resolve their issues or refer them to help from Vermont Health Connect.
But he added that some of the collections notices may be legitimate.
“I imagine, though I have no way of knowing for sure, that some of those 486 (notices) are people who are actually behind on their payments,” he said.
