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Democratic legislators, meanwhile, are wary of being blamed for the website’s woes. House Health Care Committee Chairman Mike Fisher, who said he told administration officials he favored the deployment of the contingency plan, said he’s relieved they took action. But he said he plans to continue holding weekly hearings to monitor the situation. “I think my job at this time is to continue to shine a bright light on the process and continue to push all the entities to get the system working,” he said. When Shumlin delivers his budget address Wednesday, he’ll surely continue to focus on opiate abuse — a worthy subject, if ever there was one. But with the Klieg lights shining on Vermont Health Connect — at least until those pesky legislators go home in May — it’s unlikely Shumlin will be able to change the subject completely.
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Disclosure: Tim Ashe is the domestic partner of Seven Days publisher and coeditor Paula Routly.
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As we reported online over the holidays, Seven Days has hired former VTDigger reporter aLicia Freese to cover Burlington, health care and higher education. A Tunbridge native and Pomona College graduate, Freese went to work for Digger in September 2012 and covered everything from human services to statewide politics. Freese fills the second new reporting position at Seven Days since former Valley News editor JeFF GooD was named as the paper’s coeditor for news in September. Freese started Monday. Replacing her at VTDigger is Laura krantz, who comes from MetroWest Daily in Framingham, Mass. A Boston University grad, Krantz won the New England Newspaper & Press Association’s 2013 Morley Piper First Amendment Award. The Lebanon, N.H.-based Valley News, meanwhile, has promoted longtime editorial page editor Martin Frank to replace Good as the paper’s editor. Frank was a reporter and editor at New Hampshire’s Keene Sentinel before joining the Valley News in 1986. m
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companies’ deadline. But, he hinted, “If there is a contingency needed, we’re going to deploy it.” Sure enough, that contingency was deployed Tuesday morning. Department of Vermont Health Access Commissioner Mark Larson, who oversees the exchange, told reporters at a Winooski press conference that, once again, the administration had fallen short of its goal: The system still couldn’t process payments for small businesses seeking to insure their employees. In order to provide “clarity” and “predictability” to employers, Larson said, those required to select new plans by April 1 would now be required to sign up through the insurance companies — not Vermont Health Connect’s website. “Our decision today isn’t based on an impending deadline,” Larson said, but rather a desire to provide “time and clarity” to employers to get the job done. Not everyone bought the “predictability” spin. Vermont Chamber of Commerce President Betsy Bishop, who has been calling for such a contingency plan since October, said later Tuesday, “Very little about small business enrollment in Vermont Health Connect has been predictable over the last four or five months.” First, businesses with 50 or fewer employees were told they had to enroll through the website by December. Then, they were told in November they could also choose to put it off until April 1 or enroll through their carrier. In December, businesses that opted to stick with the website were told that, like it or not, their new plans might not take effect until April. Now, they’re being told to skip the website altogether and just call the insurance companies. “It begs the question,” said Lt. Gov. phiL scott, a Republican, “When all is said and done, if we’re saying insurance companies are better able to process payments after all we’ve done, what have we gotten for the eightysomething-million dollars we’ve spent? Because we’ve gone back to what we had before: The insurance companies are doing the processing.” In the legislature, Tuesday’s announcement threatens to add fuel to the fire. House Minority Leader Don turner (R-Milton), who’d planned to reiterate his calls for such a contingency plan at a press conference scheduled for Tuesday morning, said he’s “disappointed it took so long for the governor to come to this conclusion. I mean, we’re 14 days into the month of January. We were calling for this back in October.”
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