In addition to the individual healthcare exchange, the Affordable Care Act established the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) specifically for small businesses with 50 or fewer employees. As with the individual health insurance exchange, an online portal was developed for SHOP through which the employees of eligible businesses can enroll in health insurance plans. But, like the federal healthcare exchange and many of the state-run exchanges, the SHOP portal experienced major technical glitches and was taken offline in February 2014 as a result. The portal has not been brought back online to date.
Businesses must now enroll with traditional paper applications, a tedious and time-consuming process. Because businesses are not able to get their employees enrolled online, the numbers of people enrolling through SHOP have stagnated.
To date, just 1,200 of California’s 700,000 small businesses have enrolled through the SHOP exchange to date. Covered California spokeswoman Anne Gonzalez told Voice of San Diego and Kaiser Health News recently that the primary focus had been on individual enrollments, but now that the individual enrollment deadline has passed, Covered California will focus once again on getting the SHOP portal back up and running smoothly.
Small businesses with fewer than 50 full-time equivalent employees aren’t required to offer employees coverage; however, many elect to do so, in any case. Businesses with fewer than 25 full-time equivalent employees earning less than $50,000 on average are eligible for tax credits, making the SHOP exchange an especially important resource for these businesses.
Stay tuned for more information and updates about the SHOP exchange as it becomes available. The agents at Benefit Packages are expertly trained on the Affordable Care Act and are your resource for information about Covered California. Call us today for information about how to get your employees covered.