Close
Current temperature in Boston - 62 °
BECOME A MEMBER
Get access to a personalized news feed, our newsletter and exclusive discounts on everything from shows to local restaurants, All for free.
Already a member? Sign in.
The Bay State Banner
BACK TO TOP
The Bay State Banner
POST AN AD SIGN IN

Trending Articles

Wellness expo brings community support to Roxbury residents

Sarah-Ann Shaw, Boston's reporting legend, 90

Uncle Nearest Premium Whiskey honors first African American Master Distiller’s legacy

READ PRINT EDITION

Mass. Health Connector helping small businesses

Martin Desmarais
Mass. Health Connector helping small businesses
Dave Kerrigan, director of business development for the Massachusetts Health Connector. (Photo: Photo courtesy of Massachusetts Health Connector)

This time last year, the trouble people had trying to enroll online for health care made Obamacare the brunt of much criticism and was widely reported, but what was little known is that small businesses had it much worse — the federal government just gave up even trying to enroll businesses online.

Now, with the Affordable Care Act open enrollment period back again, the federal government finally made the move to include small businesses in online enrollment — and the system actually seems to be working — but the only problem is few small businesses seem to care.

The federal Small Business Health Options Program, known as SHOP, is set up to help companies with 50 or fewer workers get better deals for employee health coverage, under the requirements of The Affordable Care Act. Setting up an online SHOP marketplace, like a similar version for individuals, is supposed to be the easiest way to get the best deal.

Perhaps small businesses owners are still holding a grudge from being pushed aside last year, but after a couple of weeks of open enrollment the numbers are poor. Federal officials are not saying just how many small businesses are offering health coverage through SHOP plans, but the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the online insurance marketplaces, has released one set of numbers offering some insight. During the first week, the SHOP marketplace on HealthCare.gov got 200,000 visits, compared with more than 1.5 million visits to the individual health plans.

Critics are not impressed.

The government is saying it expects SHOP to be a success, for one, because small businesses will no longer be able to renew pre-Obamacare health plans that provided less coverage and cost less, which was an option last year.

And Obamacare officials say SHOP saves businesses money, which looks to be true. Researchers at the University of Chicago took a look at SHOP program and compared it across the country and found its prices were 7 percent lower than similar health coverage plans offered through other sources or through health insurance brokers.

This savings represents about $220 a year, per employee, which one would think would be enough to make small businesses take notice.

In Massachusetts, the answer to why more small businesses are not flooding the federal SHOP marketplace is pretty simple. While the federal government dropped the ball last year — and even before that — the state has a reliable option to help small businesses with health coverage already in the Massachusetts Health Connector.

Started in 2009, as part of Massachusetts’ health reform law, the Health Connector has been offering what the federal government seemed to be just dreaming about last year and only now seems to be managing — an online marketplace to get the best health insurance deals.

“We are one-stop shopping for 10 different health insurance carriers and five different dental carriers representing 100 different plans,” said Dave Kerrigan, director of business development for the Massachusetts Health Connector.

The Health Connector works with business owners and health insurance brokers and has all the big players in health insurance in the state, including Blue Cross Blue Shield, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and Tufts Health Plan.

According to Kerrigan, the variety of options and savings has attracted many small businesses to the program since its launch and continues to grow.

Not surprisingly, the Obama administration’s struggles to get the federal SHOP online marketplace up-and-running did impact the Health Connector.

“We compete against a lot of press this year that said the SHOP website was broken and people thought our website was broken. It wasn’t,” Kerrigan said.

Obamacare regulations also impacted the Health Connector numbers, but the organization rallied and has doubled the amount of businesses that use it. Prior to the Affordable Care Act, the Health Connector had 5,000 members, but the new laws meant the self-employed could not get health insurance as a small business, which eliminated half of those a year ago. However, Kerrigan says the Health Connector is already back to 5,000 users — all of which are small businesses.

Savings, such as those offered by the Health Connector’s Wellness Program, are also a big draw for the state’s small businesses. The wellness program could save some businesses 15 percent on health insurance. In addition, the federal government also offers small business health care tax credits through participation in program’s such as the Massachusetts Health Connector — with possible savings as much as 50 percent on the employer’s share of health insurance premiums.

Officials at the Massachusetts District Office of the U.S. Small Business Administration are pushing small businesses toward the federal SHOP marketplace, as well as the Massachusetts Health Connector.

Their thinking is that it doesn’t matter how the state’s small businesses get their health insurance coverage, only that they get it.

“We have definitely been doing some training throughout the last few years, because it is so important for small business to know what is going on,” said SBA Deputy District Director Anne Hunt.

In fact, the SBA offers a weekly, live webinar series for small business owners on the basics of the Affordable Care Act and how to enroll in SHOP.

Hunt says the Massachusetts Health Connector is an important resource for the state small businesses.

“They are really the experts and we try to funnel businesses to the experts,” she said.