Vermont Health Connect is the state’s exchange website and the bureaucracy that acts as the “agent” between the public and the two remaining ACA insurers in Vermont. This morning, the Burlington Free Press reported behind its paywall that “Vermont Health Connect problems continue despite improvements.”

Management of health coverage through Vermont Health Connect continues to be rocky as the website continues to rely on manual back-end processes when someone’s household income has changed or when a dependent has been added or removed from coverage. In those cases, a staff member has to manually enter the information into multiple databases.

For people who had a change in circumstance or some other issue carried over from the previous year, problems can take weeks or even months to resolve. A lot of those people have had their problems snowball, Vermont Legal Aid’s health care advocate said. “Our call volume has actually gone up for problems. … The calls we’re getting, the problems are taking way longer to resolve. They’re more complicated.”

What a surprise.