Obama Delays Launch of Small Biz Health Exchange Website
In yet another setback for Obama's healthcare reform, the administration announced Wednesday that its small businesses online exchange will be delayed for one year, preventing small businesses from buying new plans via HealthCare.gov until November 2014.
The Small Business Health Options Program, or SHOP, which had already suffered delays before, was supposed to give businesses of fewer than 50 employees an easier way to get a more convenient healthcare plan for their employees
The delay is just the latest in a long string of issues for Obama's healthcare reform. Most notably, HealthCare.gov has been riddled with glitches and bugs since it launced in October.
The delay affects 36 states where the federal government is in charge of running the health insurance exchange. It does not affect the other 14 states, which manage their own exchanges.
In yet another setback for Obama's healthcare reform, the administration announced Wednesday that its small businesses online exchange will be delayed for one year, preventing small businesses from buying new plans via HealthCare.gov until November 2014.
The Small Business Health Options Program, or SHOP, which had already suffered delays before, was supposed to give businesses of fewer than 50 employees an easier way to get a more convenient healthcare plan for their employees
The delay is just the latest in a long string of issues for Obama's healthcare reform. Most notably, HealthCare.gov has been riddled with glitches and bugs since it launced in October.
“We’ve concluded that we can best serve small employers by continuing this offline process while we concentrate on both creating a smoothly functioning online experience in the SHOP Marketplace, and adding key new features, including an employee choice option and premium aggregation services, by November 2014,” read a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services notice, as reported by POLITICO.The offline process to which the notice refers allows small businesses to apply for exchange coverage by paper, an option they've had since Oct. 1. To facilitate exchanges, the administration also announced Wednesday that companies looking for new coverage can now sign up using an agent or broker, or directly with an insurance company.
The delay affects 36 states where the federal government is in charge of running the health insurance exchange. It does not affect the other 14 states, which manage their own exchanges.
No Thanksgiving Celebrations for Obamacare Website Team
The technology team working to fix computer problems hobbling the federal insurance website HealthCare.gov may not have time for turkey this week. Federal officials set a Nov. 30 deadline to expand hardware capacity and fix software bugs for the site and say they are racing against the clock to make it work well “for the vast majority of users” by Saturday.
“We have a lot of work left to do in the next few days,” Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), told reporters Wednesday. Bataille said HealthCare.gov, which launched Oct. 1 and is meant to facilitate health-insurance enrollment for individuals in 36 states, can now handle 25,000 users at a time. She said CMS expects that capacity to double by Saturday. “We are on track for that to happen,” she said.Yet, Bataille warned that Nov. 30 is “not a magical day.”
“There will be times after Nov. 30 when the site, like any website, does not perform optimally,” she said. Heavy traffic could overwhelm the site, causing long delays for consumers trying to sign up for coverage. Bataille said that by Saturday, CMS will implement a “more advanced queuing system” for consumers forced to wait for one of 50,000 user slots. In addition, the website may recommend some users leave and come back during “off-peak hours” and will have a system to e-mail consumers when they can return to the website and enroll in a health-insurance plan.
This announcement comes after a series of other delays in rolling out the ACA. In July, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that ACA fines charged to large employers who do not offer coverage would start in 2015, instead of 2014. A Spanish-language version of HealthCare.gov, originally expected to launch Oct. 1, will not function until December, HHS said on Tuesday.
This announcement comes after a series of other delays in rolling out the ACA. In July, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that ACA fines charged to large employers who do not offer coverage would start in 2015, instead of 2014. A Spanish-language version of HealthCare.gov, originally expected to launch Oct. 1, will not function until December, HHS said on Tuesday.
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And thanks to crashes, slow response times and software and hardware problems, HealthCare.gov itself has fallen behind enrollment goals set by federal officials who had hoped 7 million individuals would sign up for new coverage through that exchange and those run by states by the end of an open-enrollment period that ends March 31.
In October, 106,185 people signed up for coverage through ACA exchanges run by the federal government and states, far short of the 500,000 federal officials had reportedly projected would enroll that month. In an effort to give consumers more time to purchase plans for coverage that starts Jan. 1, when many existing individual plans will end, the federal government recently said consumers who sign up for plans by Dec. 23 could purchase insurance that will start on Jan. 1. The previous deadline for such coverage was Dec. 15.
In October, 106,185 people signed up for coverage through ACA exchanges run by the federal government and states, far short of the 500,000 federal officials had reportedly projected would enroll that month. In an effort to give consumers more time to purchase plans for coverage that starts Jan. 1, when many existing individual plans will end, the federal government recently said consumers who sign up for plans by Dec. 23 could purchase insurance that will start on Jan. 1. The previous deadline for such coverage was Dec. 15.
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