Because of ,more problems with the rollout of the presidents healthcare law, the Obama administration has postponed for at least a year its plans to allow small businesses in many states to use a website to select health insurance plans for their employees. The postponement is another major setback for the presidents hopes of showcasing Obamacare. Because small businesses in every state can still sign up their workers through brokers or insurers, the lack of an online enrollment system in many states may not have a large, short-term impact on coverage, but that did little to lessen the political sting, however. Its another broken promise and more proof this administrations assurances have no credibility, House Speaker John A. Boehner said. This law has been an absolute disaster, leaving us to ask, Whats next?Several leading business groups also reiterated their reservations about the law. Administration officials said they hoped that a website allowing small employers to shop online would be operational by November 2014 so that employers can select plans for 2015. The agency has been focused for the last two months on rescuing HealthCare.gov and meeting Saturdays self-imposed deadline for making the site usable for the vast majority of users. The small-business marketplaces — known as SHOP exchanges, for Small Business Health Options Program — were supposed to offer small employers the ability to compare plans for their employees online. SHOP marketplaces have been dogged by many of the same technical problems that led to the disastrous rollout of the online marketplaces for individual consumers. The president keeps telling us how great it will be once it is all up and running. Two months into the roll out it is hard to find any part that is working at all. Several states have functional exchanges, which if you think about it makes the federal program look even worse. Hey, wait a minute, maybe we should let the states decide for themselves and leave the Federal government out of it so they can concentrate on saving the postal system, giving nuke’s to Iran, and threatening to bomb Syria….you know….Federal stuff.
Posted on: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 12:46:28 +0000