Chittenden Sen. Ginny Lyons is the chairwoman of the Legislature’s Health Care Oversight Committee. And she says that security shortcomings on Vermont Health Connect warranted the decision earlier this week to temporarily shut it down.
But Lyons says legislators were caught flat-footed by a surprise announcement of bad news from the administration of Gov. Peter Shumlin.
“I believe that some prior notice would have been very helpful to folks, so that we would respond to the questions that we’ve been asked,” she said.
Lyons expressed that sentiment to Shumlin’s chief of health care reform Lawrence Miller, who on Thursday made his first appearance before lawmakers since the dramatic announcement on Tuesday.
Miller told legislators that the state had failed to attain key federal security benchmarks. And he said that disabling the site altogether was the only “rational” decision.
Miller said he appreciated lawmakers’ frustration at being kept in the dark until the last moment. But he said bad actors may have otherwise exploited the state’s vulnerabilities, and that he did not regret the decision.
“Security advisors say if you are going to do something for a security reason, you do not telegraph that ahead of time, because you simply make yourself an attractive target in the interim,” Miller said.
Miller said the site will be up and functioning before Nov. 15, when Vermont Health Connect consumers will begin re-enrolling in policies sold on the exchange. He said this latest move to resolve longstanding technological problems will be more successful than the failed attempts of the past.
The state hired a new contractor, called Optum, to take over the project last month.
“I would say that … the addition of a substantial number of people with fresh perspective and direct experience with these issues has been like night and day,” Miller said. “And we have fresh faces on the state side too. I think it’s important to acknowledge that we need to step up our performance. It’s not just the contractors.”
But confidence among many lawmakers and health care providers is flagging. And the state’s inability to deliver a fully functioning insurance exchange has fueled new doubt about the next phase of Shumlin’s reform agenda, an agenda that aims ultimately to transition to a single-payer health care system.
“As we’ve had some experience moving from hope to experience, the skepticism of this being a successful endeavor has increased,” Paul Harrington, executive vice-president of the Vermont Medical Society, told legislators.
Addison Sen. Claire Ayer is the Democratic chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Health and Welfare. Ayer says she remains convinced that the current system needs a dramatic overhaul But she says she’s not so sure the public is still on board.
“Part of making universal health care or single-payer care a success is to gain confidence of the people who are going to use it and provide it and pay for it,” Ayer said. “And I think their confidence has been shaken, and justifiably so.”
Miller said cost overruns related to the shutdown of the exchange will be minimal, and that the federal government will cover the added expenditures. He said he anticipates more substantial cost increases related to other functionality issues, namely the site’s inability to process changes in policy holders' circumstances, which will require higher staff loads than previously envisioned. But he said the federal government will pay for those expenses as well. And he said he expects no adverse fiscal impact on the general fund.
