WASHINGTON (AP) — Small businesses seeking to buy health insurance under President Barack Obama's health care law will have to wait a couple of months before they can complete the process online, administration officials said Thursday in the latest delay of the high-stakes rollout.
New online health insurance markets created by the law for individuals and small businesses are scheduled to open Tuesday. Small- business owners will be able to go online, compare their options and start an application, but they won't be able to finalize it until sometime in November. That would still allow the firms to get coverage for their employees by Jan. 1.
"We wanted to make sure this was going to work properly and be effective for small businesses," Gary Cohen, the Health and Human Services Department official overseeing the rollout, said in an interview. "We just felt like taking the additional time to make sure everything was functioning the way we wanted was the right thing to do."
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