Online delay in insurance sign-up

Racing to improve individual health-law shoppers' experience by the end of this week, the Obama administration announced Wednesday it would delay a significant piece of the small business insurance marketplace.

The Small Business Health Options Program, know as the SHOP exchange, will not offer online enrollment until November 2014, a one-year delay from a launch that was initially planned for this October.

Administration officials characterized the decision as one made necessary as they prioritized fixes to the individual health exchange, which the White House has promised will "work smoothly for the vast majority of users" by Dec. 1.

"What's important in our work is to continue to prioritize the best consumer experience for those who are coming to us online," Medicare spokeswoman Julie Bataille said. "These decisions all reflect [that] reality."

The Obama administration is aiming to double HealthCare.gov's capacity by Sunday, increasing it from 25,000 concurrent users up to 50,000 shoppers using the Web portal at once. Bataille said it was "on track" to hit that metric by Dec. 1.

Small businesses will still have the option to purchase SHOP health insurance plans through a broker or agent, who will assist the employer with filing a paper application. The federal government expects to process those filings for eligibility within three to five days, according to a document circulated to health-law stakeholders.

"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 and Medicaid Services document said.

With this new delay, small businesses will likely see little change in the way they purchase health insurance until 2015. They will, however, need to purchase one of the plans sold on the SHOP marketplace, through a broker, if they want to access a tax credit available to employers with fewer than 25 employees.