Down. Again.

Vermont Health Connect is offline for another software upgrade. The website went dark last night so the latest, newest, greatest, most perfect software can be uploaded. Again.

Let’s recap.

September 16, 2014
The Vermont Health Connect website was taken down Monday night and will remain offline to correct functionality problems and allow for improvements to data security, state officials said.

January 5, 2015
Management of health coverage through Vermont Health Connect continues to be rocky. 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. People signing up for health coverage online for the first time seem OK. But 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…

May 29, 2015
Vermont Health Connect user applications and accounts will be unavailable until Monday to allow for system upgrades, according to state officials. Once deployed, the new technology is expected to allow customer service staff to process customer requests more quickly.

October 1, 2015
The website went dark Thursday night so the latest new software can be uploaded. Again. It will stay offline until Monday. The latest upgrade came because customers still can’t make some simple changes to their personal information online; other functions will be added over the coming weeks leading up to the Nov. 1 start of open enrollment when Vermonters will sign up for 2016 health insurance plans.

The Unaffordable Care Act gave Vermont’s nearly $200 million to build a state exchange from scratch. $144 million has been spent so far.

Every state that has tried has struggled to build its own health insurance exchange but a report last month rates Vermont more functional than almost all others.

“We are thrilled to be where we are,” Gov. Shumlin says.