Briefly: Cover Oregon's future, Vermont staffs up & you should probably check your HC.gov account before auto-renewing

Once toothless, Cover Oregon board tackles an uncertain future

...After taking political heat for the exchange's technological failure, the appointees of Gov. John Kitzhaber are taking on a more significant role, transforming the agency for the future. At a time when critics of the agency say it should go away, it's the bureaucratic equivalent of an existential moment for an agency considered crucial to federal health reforms.

... The state's planned 2015 partnership with the federal exchange is called a "supported state-based" exchange. But it's supposed to be a temporary fix before setting up a full-fledged state-based exchange. It allows Oregon to keep insurer fees of about 2.5 percent of premiums for itself until the state resurrects its own website.

Vermont Health Connect shakes up practices, adds personnel

Thousands of people are unable to fix mistakes or change their coverage online through Vermont Health Connect, and Lawrence Miller, the head of health care reform, says the state needs to put contingencies in place.

The state will continue to employ customer service representatives who will make the changes manually, instead of trying to connect the disparate IT systems required to automate changes, he told lawmakers at a legislative hearing Wednesday.

Plan to simplify 2015 health renewals may backfire

Insurance exchange customers who opt for convenience by automatically renewing their coverage for 2015 are likely to receive dated and inaccurate financial aid amounts from the government, say industry officials, advocates and other experts.

If those amounts are too low, consumers could get sticker shock over their new premiums. Too high, and they'll owe the tax man later.

I don't have much to say about the first two items, but on the last one, as I said in an earlier post, I actually think it would make far more sense to just skip the "auto-renew" feature for now anyway, given the massive amount of confusion that people already have about the enrollment process:

As an aside, I also question the wisdom of not requiring everyone to re-enroll each year. Obviously HHS is trying to minimize the inconvenience/hassle factor, but it seems to me that this is just going to cause even greater confusion than it would if they simply issued a blanket statement: If you enrolled via an ACA exchange, you have to renew once a year even if nothing else has changed.

I don't see doing this as a big deal; people have to renew their license plates every year even if it's for the same car, for example. They don't have to make it that complicated...just have big Yes/No radio buttons once you log in that says "Have you had any significant changes in (income, dependents, etc...provide a list) since (date of existing policy enrollment)?" If no, then you click "Save" and you're done. If yes, then you go ahead and make whatever changes are necessary.