The Obama Administration has announced another Affordable Care Act delay, this time for small businesses shopping in federally-run insurance exchanges.
Small employers can still purchase ACA-subsidized health plans for their employees, but they'll have to use agents and brokers and won't be able to use Healthcare.gov, or the plan choice and premium aggregation services that were supposed to be offered through the website, until next November.
"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," the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services wrote to stakeholders in a memo obtained by Politico and the Washington Post.
The one-year delay comes eight months after the Obama Administration announced a one-year delay for the federal marketplace's defined contribution, employees choice and premium aggregation services as part of the ACA Small Business Health Options Program, and four months after the Administration announced a de facto delay for the employer coverage mandate.
Days before the launch of the federal insurance exchange, CMS announced what was then billed as a temporary delay for online enrollment in small business health plans.
While the delay in online enrollment for small business plans only affects the federal exchange operating in 36 states, the rest of the exchanges have taken varied paths on SHOP -- some like Connecticut offering the full suite of services called for in the ACA -- and the delay is likely to sow more confusion.
A longtime critic of the ACA, the National Federation of Independent Businesses pounced on the news of the delay.
Kevin Kuhlman, the NFIB's manager of legislative affairs, called the delay "a disappointment but not a surprise."
In a statement, Kuhlman continued: "It probably matters little to people in Washington that the failure to get the small business exchanges online adds yet another onerous paperwork requirement for job creators. The continued delays add to uncertainty and contribute to the decision of many owners to take early renewals of their small-group plans."