Policy

Obamacare Struggles To Offer Anything to Small Businesses

Not going according to plan

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Where was the contingency plan?

That's what Joe Klein asks upon learning that Obamacare's health care exchanges, a sort of government-run insurance supermarket, are going to delay implementation of most of functionality that was supposed to be available for small businesses.  Instead of a choice of offerings, in many areas, they'll basically have one.  This is worse, not better, than the current markets.

Sure, the administration was surprised when so many states declined to operate their own exchanges, forcing the federal government to step in.  But the administration doesn't seem to have prepared for that possibility, even though it was an obvious threat by last year.  Instead, they held open the deadline for states to declare, making themselves even later.