While
new sign-ups are moving along swimmingly on Healthcare.gov 2.0 in the individual market, the exchange for small businesses, SHOP, isn't. The slow start-up seems to be a result of both website hiccups and
lack of interest on the part of employers, who aren't seeing the benefits of trading the tax deductions they can already take for providing insurance versus the temporary tax credits they'd receive from purchasing plans on the exchange.
Insurance brokers are, at times, having trouble getting into their accounts and, in scattered cases, are not showing up in the computer system’s lists of local insurance professionals available to coach small businesses. More broadly, interviews with brokers and others suggest that, in the two weeks since the marketplace’s health plans went on sale for 2015, interest within the niche they are intended to help seems scant.
During the first week, that part of HealthCare.gov drew 200,000 visits, compared with more than 1.5 million people who looked at the Web site’s health plans for individuals, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the branch of the Department of Health and Human Services overseeing the online insurance marketplaces. […]
Administration officials are heartened by data, analyzed by the White House Council of Economic Advisers, showing that the number of health plans participating in the small-business marketplace has increased slightly from last year, while monthly insurance premiums have been relatively stable.
Still, interviews with brokers, state health-care officials and small-business organizations suggest that progress this year is likely to be slow—for reasons rooted in both the computer system and a few of the Obama administration’s decisions.
One of those decisions was postponing a requirement in the law that small-business employees be guaranteed a choice among health plans in their areas. With that requirement postponed, for the second time this year, there's less competition for employers to choose from, and less incentive to actually shop around. For many who do explore SHOP, they don't necessarily find a better deal than what they've currently got because of existing tax deductions.
Still, there are more insurance companies looking at joining this market, and the administration has been doing more to work with brokers to help them navigate the system and assist their clients. As it stands now, though, there have been just 76,000 sign-ups through SHOP, as opposed to the 2 million estimated by congressional budget analysts.