Vermont’s new health insurance marketplace, called Vermont Health Connect, will set the stage for a head-to-head business battle to win over the 100,000 Vermonters who will soon be searching for coverage.
The state of Vermont and the marketplace’s two players — MVP Health Care and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont — are also launching major outreach programs to alert many Vermonters that their current health insurance plans will no longer be valid in 2014 and show them ways forward. The state of Vermont has roughly $9 million in federal money to spend on outreach and education over the next two years.
The Web-based market is slated to open Oct. 1, 2013. On Jan. 1, 2014, Vermonters buying insurance individually or through businesses with 50 or fewer employees will be required to purchase coverage on the exchange. The enrollment period to purchase that insurance, however, will end for the year at the end of March 2014.
Market forces
At present, Blue Cross has a stronghold on Vermont’s individual and small-group markets, covering more than three-fourths, or 60,000, of those lives. MVP, by comparison, covers 19,000 to 20,000 lives.
When those insurance markets open up, MVP is hoping to make up some major ground.
“Blue Cross has potentially more to lose,” said Augusta Martin, MVP’s vice president of marketing. “We’ll be out there aggressively supporting our customer base and looking for new ones. … I see this as a big opportunity for us to both retain existing customers that have been loyal to the MVP brand and really be attracting new individuals and small group members.”
But the state’s largest insurer isn’t rolling over; it, too, is looking to take advantage of this occasion.
“We do see this as a market opportunity,” said Catherine Hamilton, Blue Cross Vermont’s vice president of planning. “I think we thought going into this that a lot of the competition is going to be based on the value of these products, in terms of the price, the network coverage and the service. From all three perspectives, we feel really well positioned.”
Blue Cross proposed cheaper premium rates for four of the six main tiers of the health insurance plans in the exchange. But those proposed rates are susceptible to change as the Green Mountain Care Board reviews and prepares to finalize them. For more on that process, read here and to see a side-by-side comparison the proposed rates, click here.
The need for outreach
In March 2012, the state polled Vermonters to learn about whether they had “heard anything yet about this online exchange or marketplace.”
Seventy-three percent answered no.
Hamilton said that Blue Cross recently carried out its own poll and discovered that two-thirds of Vermonters still did not know about Vermont Health Connect.
To help Vermonters learn about the exchange, Blue Cross is setting aside major resources.
“We’ve retrained about 10 percent of our work force,” Hamilton said. “This is an extraordinary effort for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Vermont. This came from anticipating a complex and large transition for Vermonters.”
Blue Cross works with about 7,000 businesses that they want to shift to the exchange without losing them as customers. Blue Cross is also working to transition roughly 15,000 individuals enrolled in the state-subsidized Catamount program, which will end in 2014.
“The awareness is starting to build,” Hamilton said. “More and more people are becoming aware of what’s about to happen, but very few people know the details.”
Hamilton said that both she and Blue Cross CEO Don George have met with 3,000 Vermonters, and the company has a slew of business meetings, webinars and summer events planned. Blue Cross has taken a three-tier approach to getting the word out about this program. The first phase is focused on raising awareness about the exchange, the second part is on the products and the price, and third phase is based on informing people about how to enroll.
MVP is taking a similar approach to getting the word out. The company has hosted webinars at discovermvp.com and has created a survival guide for the exchange. MVP’s Martin said that moving into the summer months, the company plans to focus on practical knowledge.
“Our campaign, as we come into summer, is: What do you really need to know,” she said.
But the two companies aren’t alone in their push to inform Vermonters of this new market; the state is at the outset of a massive outreach push.
The state’s $9 million campaign
The state is just beginning to launch a host of information sessions, one-on-one guidance programs and media campaigns — both social and traditional.
The state has $7.4 million for education and outreach from a $104.2 million federal grant for establishing the exchange, and the state received another $1.6 million to bulk up the state’s in-person assistance program at the exchange’s outset. In-person aids, known as “navigators,” will help guide Vermonters through the marketplace.
The exchange’s twitter handle, @vthealthconnect, featured six tweets and 20 followers as of Monday at 4 p.m., and its Facebook page has received 57 “likes.” By comparison, Gov. Peter Shumlin’s twitter account has 7,103 followers and his Facebook page has 4,557 likes.
The state’s outreach and education plan for the exchange contains analytics that show media trends. Vermonters 18 and older spend 133.9 hours a month watching television, 84.4 hours listening to the radio and 49.7 hours online. Those numbers are much more even among adults 18-34 years of age.
Television has the broadest reach, but outreach and education director Sean Sheehan also noted that its paid ads are the most expensive. The advantage of online promotion is that it links Vermonters directly to the exchange site. Radio ads have the second widest reach, and the state will use them to target rural audiences. Traditional print media will also be used to target rural communities, where readership is higher.
The state will launch waves of media buys from July 2013 to December 2014, and Sheehan and his small management team will pay particularly close attention to Vermonters ages 26-34 because that is the demographic that is most likely to be uninsured, according to the outreach plan. Leading up to the opening date of the exchange, from August to October, the state will make its biggest media push yet.
“Research has shown that people tend to tune things out until an action point is relevant and right upon them,” Sheehan said. “It’s close enough to October that people will start to pay attention.”
Over the summer, Vermont officials will hold information sessions in communities across the state. For more on these events, see the sidebar above.
Mark Larson, commissioner of the Department of Vermont Health Access, said it’s imperative to reach out to Vermonters using a range of mediums.
“It’s a difficult communication challenge because the information is complicated and people’s individual experience varies,” he said. “Our approach is to make sure there are many sources of information and methods for accessing it as possible and that we do that in the phased approach over the next several months so that we have multiple opportunities to engage people.”
