Vermont: 15.6K QHP renewals, 2,140 New QHPs

This Just In, directly from the VT exchange...

Vermont Health Connect Open Enrollment and Renewal Update

The following numbers are up-to-date as of 11:59pm Wednesday, December 3, 2014.

Renewals: 15,595 individuals have been checked out into 2015 health plans (out of 38,704 in the renewal pool).

New to Vermont Health Connect: 2,140 individuals have been checked out into 2015 health plans.

Additional Notes:

• 1) Since the start of open enrollment, the Customer Support Center has answered over 16,000 calls and the average wait time has been less than 10 seconds.
• 2) Our partners at Optum expect to complete no-change renewals today, ahead of schedule.
• 3) Because this year’s renewal work is a manual process, quality control is essential. State volunteers have played a vital role in this regard, first going through training and then working to confirm the accuracy of more than 10,000 renewal applications and send those applications to our insurance carrier partners. Their productivity has outpaced expectations, which in turn is allowing Optum to complete no-change renewals ahead of schedule.

My own notes on this:

• Vermont's official QHP tally as of April 19 was 38,048, which means they currently have slightly more enrolled than they did last spring, contrary to most states
• Over 40% of Vermont's enrollees have already manually renewed/re-enrolled in 2015 policies, with 10 days still to go before autorenewals go into effect. This is a very positive sign in terms of avoiding premium/tax credit formula change sticker shock/surprises (ie, the more who go through the process themselves, the fewer can get pissed off later on if their autorenew plans cost more/etc.
• The renewed + new total is 17,735...or 46.6% of their 2014 open enrollment total, in just 19 days.
• While the new enrollment total is pretty small so far, it's important to remember that Vermont has only around 44,000 residents who are even eligible for ACA exchange QHPs total anyway.