SHOP Early Access Available to Small Businesses in Five States

The Federally-Facilitated Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) Marketplace Early Access launched on October 27th in Delaware, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey and Ohio. The SHOP Marketplace helps small businesses provide health coverage to their employees and is open to employers with 50 or fewer full-time equivalent employees. “SHOP Early Access” will allow small businesses, agents, and brokers to try out new online pre-enrollment SHOP features, and help set the stage for the full online debut on November 15.

Small businesses, health insurance agents and brokers and trained assisters are getting an early chance to use the pre-enrollment features between now and when online enrollment in SHOP coverage begins nationwide. The users of Early Access are helping us to test the new online features, which will give the SHOP Marketplace important information about the user experience to begin the continuous quality improvement process before the site goes live in mid-November.

The new features allow small businesses to establish a Marketplace SHOP account, assign a SHOP agent/broker to their account, complete an employer SHOP eligibility application, obtain an eligibility determination from the FF-SHOP, and upload an employee roster. Employers will also be able to browse 2015 SHOP plans and pricing as soon as these are available in November, allowing them to decide which plans to offer their employees for this round of Open Enrollment.

Throughout the month of October, the Administration held events in the five Early Access states and other forums to receive feedback from small business representatives, agents and brokers, and assisters who participated in live demonstrations of the new online pre-enrollment features of the SHOP Marketplace website.

Being on the ground in each of the five states with small business owners, employees, agents and brokers allowed us to offer hands-on technical assistance to those interested in using SHOP Early Access. We learned that many small businesses, and their agents and brokers, liked the new features and were eager to learn and spread the word about the new way to browse, compare, and enroll their employees online.

SHOP offers businesses with 1 to 50 employees a choice of health and dental plans, and tools to help employers make informed decisions about health insurance coverage.  On November 15, we’ll take that experience online and the SHOP Marketplace will make it possible for employers and employees to enroll directly through HealthCare.gov in qualified health and dental plans for coverage in 2015.

We look forward to continuing to work with people around the country, to make sure small businesses and agents and brokers know about the enhancements coming to the SHOP Marketplace in a few short weeks.

Originally posted on U.S. Department of Health & Human Services