Vermont adds extra ObamaCare period

Vermont on Thursday became the third state to add an extra ObamaCare sign-up period through the end of tax season, adding pressure on federal health officials to take the same approach.

While the official ObamaCare deadline passed on Sunday, about a quarter of all state exchanges have added a grace period to accommodate the millions of uninsured people who will be forced to pay a penalty for the first time this tax season.

"It would be awful for a Vermont family to have to pay a fee of several hundred dollars or more, and then have to pay 100 percent of their medical care on top of that, just because they didn't know the penalty existed,” Lawrence Miller, chief of Vermont’s Health Care Reform, wrote in a statement Thursday.

“When our federal partners expressed an openness to providing this enrollment flexibility, we jumped at the opportunity,” he added.

Read the rest at: http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/233215-vermont-becomes-third-state-to-add-extra-obamacare-period