[G]ov. Peter Shumlin said on Tuesday that the Vermont Health Connect backlog is decreasing, and he expects the website’s technology to be ready for open enrollment.
Shumlin said in a news conference that the number of households waiting for changes to be processed through the website has gone from 10,200 to 4,200 since June.
He said he is “cautiously optimistic” that the backlog will be cleared in time for Vermonters to renew their health insurance plans for 2016. Open enrollment runs from Nov. 1 through Jan. 31.
Customer service representatives for Vermont Health Connect can now process life changes in health insurance policies while a customer is on the phone, and the change will appear on the customer’s next bill.
Cassandra Gekas, health planning and policy chief for the Department of Vermont Health Access, said call wait times have been decreasing, and the department plans to create educational materials so Vermonters know how to use Vermont Health Connect once open enrollment starts.
“The good news for Vermonters is that we are clearing out all of that noise (from old changes),” Gekas said. “I also think our staff have had time to be trained and well practiced on the system, so I’m not worried about them being able to get through those changes by Oct. 1.”
The Legislature passed a law this year requiring the state’s health exchange contractor, Optum, to finish the website technology by Oct. 1. In the same law, the Legislature required the Shumlin administration to submit a contingency plan Aug. 1 outlining what it would do if Optum didn’t meet the requirements by Oct. 1.
The administration submitted its backup plan on Aug. 1 — saying it would need to hire 200 workers to process health plans by hand at a cost of roughly $3.5 million. The administration argued the $3.5 million figure is not as much as a private company would spend to pay an insurance broker to process health plans.
Despite the worst-case-scenario contingency plan, the administration said Tuesday that Optum’s plan is still on track. Shumlin said the administration would work with Optum to make sure there are no bugs in the software and have it running for open enrollment.
Shumlin said one of the reasons for holding the news conference was that his administration will also share the information with lawmakers tomorrow. He also thinks journalists blew the contingency plan out of proportion in last week’s news.
“I was reading the press clips and going ‘My God. It looks to most Vermonters reading this they’re gonna think think we have to spend another $2.3 million and process all this by hand,’” Shumlin said.
Lawrence Miller, chief of health care reform for the Shumlin administration, said, “It’s not like we’re going to go out and recruit 200 direct temporary employees for the state of Vermont.”
“We’ll go out and use a call center or data center contract to hire people who do this sort of work all the time, and give them the appropriate training on the Vermont Health Connect system,” Miller said.
“Only if we fail,” Shumlin said. “I just want to be clear. I don’t want to read another story like I did last week. Only if we fail. … The mission last week was to spell out the most pessimistic scenario, and I would say ‘Mission accomplished.’”
The House Health Care Committee will meet with Miller on Wednesday to discuss Vermont Health Connect.
