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.

{mosads}”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.

The Obama administration has estimated that as many as 6 million people will pay fines for not having insurance in the first year of ObamaCare. Those fees amount to $95 or 1 percent of a person’s income last year, whichever is greater.

The stakes will rise significantly to $325 or 2 percent of their income during next year’s tax season.

Advocates argue that state and federal health officials should give uninsured people a second chance to sign up for ObamaCare this year because they may not know until April about last year’s fee.

“Millions upon millions of people are unaware about these penalties,” Ron Pollack, the executive director of the nonprofit group Families USA, said in a briefing Wednesday

California, Kentucky and New York are also mulling the extra sign-up session. Secretary of Health and Human Services Sylvia Mathews Burwell said she will decide whether to add another enrollment period within the next two weeks.

All of the 13 state exchanges, as well as the federal exchange, have also extended the deadline for any customers already in queue to buy health insurance before Sunday.