WASHINGTON - Small businesses won’t be able to enroll in new online health insurance marketplaces until Nov. 1 in Arkansas and most other states, the latest delay for the Obama administration’s signature healthcare law.
Small businesses won’t be able to sign up their employees for coverage until November in 36 states, including Arkansas, where the federal government is running insurance exchanges, said Joanne Peters, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Businesses can shop for coverage on the government’s websites beginning Tuesday, the original date the marketplaces were scheduled to open, the agency said in a statement.
Heather Haywood, a spokesman for the Arkansas Insurance Department, said businesses will be able to sign up for coverage on Arkansas’ exchange using paper forms starting Tuesday but won’t be able to enroll online until Nov. 1.
Insurance marketplaces for individuals “will still open on time on Oct. 1 with full online enrollment and plan-shopping options,” Peters said.
The exchanges for small businesses, available for companies with 50 or fewer full-time workers, were something of an afterthought when Congress passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010. The administration had already said April 1 that workers at these companies won’t immediately be able to pick any health plan they want as the law intended but instead will have to sign up for a plan selected by their employers.
In Arkansas, Arkansas Blue Cross and Blue Shield will offer a gold plan, designed to cover 80 percent of a patient’s medical expenses; a silver plan to cover 70 percent of expenses; and a bronze plan to cover 60 percent of expenses.
No other companies applied to offer plans on the state’s small-business exchange, Haywood said.
The administration said July 2 that companies employing 50 or more workers won’t face fines for not providing health insurance until 2015, delaying a major provision of the law.
Officials at the Health and Human Services Department called groups representing small businesses Thursday to alert them to the one-month delay of the exchange’s functions.
“As with any major changes, there’s going to be some hiccups on the way,” said Joshua Welter, a spokesman for the Main Street Alliance, a group that represents 15,000 small businesses and has backed the health-care law. He said he received a call from department officials about the delay.
Coverage under exchange plans doesn’t begin until Jan. 1, giving the government time to sort out problems when enrollment begins next week. Unlike individuals who have an open enrollment period just once a year, small businesses using the health exchanges can enroll on a monthly basis throughout the year, the department said in its statement.
Administration officials have downplayed expectations for early enrollment under the health law and cautioned that glitches are expected in the complex system of websites and call centers.
“This will entail the mother of all growing pains,” Neil Trautwein, a vice president at the National Retail Federation in Washington, a trade group for retailers, said Thursday. Information for this article was contributed by Andy Davis of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 09/27/2013