Vermont releases 1st detailed report: 92% Jan-start paid, 80% paid overall

Until now, aside from the official monthly HHS reports, Vermont's enrollment data has been frustrating--not that it hasn't been available, it's just been released in confusing dollops (Massachusetts falls into the same category). Today, however, the Vermont Health Connect exchange released a detailed PDF that does a great job of answering the key questions--along with one bit of data I haven't seen for any other state so far: The breakdown not only of total Private QHP enrollments, but how many of these started in January, February and (upcoming) March.

Page 6 has the key data: A total of 16,906 QHP enrollees as of 2/10, of whom 13,514 are paid up. Overall, this points to an 80% paid rate, which is very good--but the monthly breakout is even more interesting: January-start enrollees have a 92% paid rate (which you'd certainly hope for by now, considering that we're into mid-February) and February-start enrollees are at 79% paid. The March-start enrollees (14%) are the ones providing the main drag on the total...but this is hardly shocking since the start date for that coverage is still over 2 weeks away.

Hopefully this helps put last night's entry, in which I pointed out that across 4 other states (WA, WI, NV and RI) only 55% of enrollees are paid into perspective. The Wisconsin story stated that their 50% payment ratio specifically applied to January-start coverage, but the other 3 states didn't distinguish between the monthly start dates, so I'm pretty sure that the earlier enrollments (Jan/Feb-starts) have a higher batting average and are being dragged down by the March-start additions. WIth the addition of Vermont, these 5 states combined now stand at 153,698 paid / 119,164 unpaid, or about 56.3% paid overall.

Meanwhile, Vermont's Medicaid enrollment number stands at 13,273.