Paper is beating digital at the California small-group healthinsurance exchange division.
|Officials at Covered California said they are shutting downtheir Small Business Health Options Program website while theyredesign it.
|The SHOP division has been taking applications on paper, and itwill continue to do so while the exchange is overhauling the SHOPsite.
|The SHOP site “is projected to be back online in the fall of2014,” the exchange said Wednesday.
|Small businesses in California can buy exchange plans through aSHOP call center and through certified exchange agents.
|Covered California enrolled 571 groups with 4,490 enrollees inexchange plans from Oct. 1, when open enrollment began, throughJan. 31. The exchange is processing 200 more applications foremployers with about 1,200 plan enrollees.
|Current Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act rules callfor individual open enrollment to end March 31. The SHOP system hasno open enrollment period. Employers can set up a SHOP plan at anyof the year.
|Thousands of producers have signed up to be Covered Californiaagents, but some have suggested that the exchange might underminethem to help its own sales representatives, enrollment assistersand others crowd agents out.
|Covered California Executive Director Peter Lee said thestate-based exchange wants to get advice from exchange agents abouthow to improve the SHOP website.
|“Certified insurance agents are critical partners in SHOP,” Leesaid.
|See also:
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Allison Bell
Allison Bell, ThinkAdvisor's insurance editor, previously was LifeHealthPro's health insurance editor. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter at @Think_Allison.
