Dive Brief:
- The Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) of the ACA, which provides an online health insurance marketplace for small businesses, has not met anticipated interest levels.
- The latest available data indicate about 85,000 people from 11,000 small businesses have SHOP coverage, far short of the one million enrollees the Congressional Budget Office had predicted it would attract by 2015.
- Market data firm Mark Farrah Associates says the 85,000 SHOP enrollees comprise less than 1% of all U.S. workers in the small group insurance market, which was estimated at 16.7 million in 2013.
Dive Insight:
The low SHOP interest can be explained by several factors, experts say, and does not appear to concern the Obama administration.
Healthcare.gov CEO Kevin Counihan told the media he expects enrollment to grow as more employers and brokers learn about it, but that it will always be a niche product. “It doesn’t really bother me," he was quoted by Kaiser Health News. "Something like this takes time.”
Among the issues that have held SHOP back:
- The system typically has fewer, more expensive options than those available outside the exchange;
- Many small businesses are taking the option to stick with their existing policies, which can be cheaper because they don't necessarily include all of the ACA's designated “essential health benefits," until 2017; and
- And website issues in multiple states have made it more complicated to utilize the SHOP marketplace than to work directly with brokers and carriers.