Larson touts successes of health care exchange rollout

by Morgan True vtdigger.org Testifying before the House Health Care Committee on Tuesday, Mark Larson, the man in charge of the Vermont Health Connect rollout, said he welcomed the opportunity to talk about health care coverage instead of IT problems ‘ however brief the respite was.
Larson, commissioner of the Department of Vermont Health Access, will be back before that committee again this afternoon.
In his comments Tuesday, Larson planted the victory flag saying, ‘If our goal was to make sure people had options for obtaining coverage in January, not experiencing a gap in coverage, we feel that the option provided by the governor in early November have successfully accomplished that, despite all our challenges along the way.’
He came prepared with numbers to back that up Tuesday.
Of the 65,000 Vermonters the administration estimated needed to sign up for coverage by January, 54,000 have done so, and the remaining 11,000 are using the sign-up extension.
The 54,000 fall into two groups ‘ those who obtain coverage through an employer and those who buy coverage for themselves or their families as individuals.
For those who receive employer coverage, two-thirds were enrolled directly through insurers or were automatically enrolled with them using the plan most similar to what they had in 2013. Those people are enrolled in plans for the entire year starting in January.
The remaining third that are using the extension will have to sign-up by the end of March.
There were also close to 800 people with individual or family plans who will need to obtain insurance through Vermont Health Connect because their employers decided to drop their employee plans.
‘One of the big priorities was to make sure nobody experienced a gap in coverage, and for the small group market we believe that we’ve accomplished that goal,’ Larson said.
There are 7,200 so-called sole-proprietors, whom Larson described as small group plans of one person or family, who must now seek coverage on the individual market due to changes under the Affordable Care Act.
Close to 34,000 of the more than 45,000 Vermonters on VHAP or Catamount qualified for Medicaid due to the federal program’s expansion. Gov. Peter Shumlin noted in his remarks Tuesday that those Vermonters will pay no premiums and see their coverage expanded.
That leaves roughly 11,000 Vermonters formerly on VHAP and Catamount, who the administration assumed would not be eligible for the Medicaid expansion and would have to enroll in subsidized plans through Vermont Health Connect.
‘What we’re finding so far is that about a third who have applied, have actually qualified for Medicaid,’ Larson said.
Asked how many formerly uninsured Vermonters now have coverage, Larson said it’s difficult to get an exact figure.
‘What we do know is that of those who have been enrolled in Medicaid through Vermont Health Connect, not the ones who enrolled through VHAP and Catamount who transitioned, those who are submitting an application, that there are several thousand who were not in our Medicaid enrollment before,’ Larson said, adding that he can’t be certain, ‘That gives us some indication that there are a number of Vermonters who were previously uninsured who have gained coverage.’
How many? At least 5,000, Larson said.
To know for certain how many of the roughly 40,000 previously uninsured Vermonters now have coverage, the state will have to wait for the annual Household Survey conducted in the fall by the Department of Financial Regulation.
Larson acknowledged that wait times at the call center are still unacceptable, and said his department is still working to reduce them. The waits are the result of higher than expected call volumes and, especially, the length of calls.
‘That was an unpredictable factor,’ Larson said, adding that the state will bring on more call center staff soon, and create an overflow capacity. That expenditure is covered by his department’s existing contract, and won’t factor into the budget adjustment act.
When Larson returns to testify Wednesday, he’s likely to field more questions about the governor’s announcement of a third-party review of the exchange rollout.
He’ll be joined by Department of Information and Innovation Commissioner Richard Boes to give testimony on IT issues.
Asked if he would give the committee an update on dealings with CGI, Larson responded that, ‘It is not a topic I can provide a whole lot of information on because it is an ongoing legal and contractual issue, so what I’d be able to share is fairly limited.’