Enrollment for Obamacare's state-operated Small Business Health Options Program is falling significantly short of government expectations, the General Accountability Office announced Thursday.
According to the nonpartisan agency's audit, as of last summer, only about 76,000 people working for about 12,000 employers had enrolled in insurance plans sold by 18 state-run SHOP exchanges. The projected enrollment of SHOP? Two million by the end of January.
The other 33 SHOP exchanges run by the federal government didn't have enrollment data available for the GAO, but GAO said they don't expect numbers to be much different.
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The SHOP news comes in light of other low projections for PPACA enrollment. The administration said this week that they expect between 9 million and 9.9 million people to enroll in plans in 2015 under the massive health care law, about 30 percent less than the numbers the Congressional Budget Office had projected for PPACA enrollment by the end of 2015.
The new GAO report of SHOP provides more fuel for PPACA critics. SHOP already has experienced a number of barriers to its success, most notably its delays by the administration.
"Obamacare's SHOPs have been fraught with errors and high costs from the very beginning," Rep. Sam Graves, R-Missouri, chairman of the House Small Business Committee, said in a statement. "The administration touted the SHOP as a way for small companies and their employees to benefit from more health insurance competition and choice, and ultimately lower prices. Instead, we have seen that costs are increasing for nearly two-thirds of small businesses that provide health insurance to their employees and the majority of small business owners paid more per employee for health insurance in 2013 than in 2012."
The GAO placed the blame of the low enrollment numbers on delayed implementation, problematic websites and continued consumer confusion of PPACA's exchanges and the law.
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