Vermont: VT Health Connect releases March 2019 effectuation report

Vermont Health Connect, the VT ACA exchange, doesn't post data reports very often, but they just did so, with enrollment data as of March 2019.

It's important to note that the numbers posted in the tables below include both Vermont's on and off-exchange enrollees in the individual and small group markets. It's also important to note that Vermont (like Massachusetts) merges both the individual and small group markets into the same risk pool for purposes of premium rate settings.

There are four tables...two for the Individual market (raw numbers and percentages) and two for the small group market. Perhaps the most noteworthy line is the "Reflective Silver" enrollments...those are people who took up the "Silver Switcharoo"...basically, unsubsidized individual market enrollees who switched from (or chose) on-exchange Silver plans to off-exchange Silver plans to save money on policies which are identical to the on-exchange Silver version but without the CSR premium load.

From what I can tell, it looks like 2,641 Vermonters snapped up these plans...but another 1,871 still enrolled in the on-exchange, Silver-loaded version, which means over 1,800 people are paying more than they have to, probably because they didn't get the word or understand the advantage of going for the "reflective" plan.

Interestingly, the reflective plans are also listed under the small group tables, even though there's no CSR assistance available for small group enrollees anyway. I'm assuming they're categorized that way simply because of the merged risk pool policy in Vermont.

 

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