House Small Business Committee Chairman Sam Graves (R-MO) today released the following statement about the ongoing problems of the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) one year into Obamacare’s troubled operations.

“From the time then-Speaker Pelosi proclaimed Obamacare should be passed ‘so you can find out what’s in it’ to today’s one-year anniversary of this burdensome law’s botched implementation, the administration has wildly over-promised and painfully under-delivered every step of the way. The past year has been littered with problems, including rising costs, cancellation notices and a faulty $2 billion website. Likewise, Obamacare’s Small Business Health Options Program has fallen woefully short of any kind of acceptable standard. To this day, the administration is unable to answer basic questions such as how many are enrolled in the program – the question this Committee has asked repeatedly since January. Instead of simplifying the health insurance process for small businesses, the SHOPs program has created confusion and uncertainty with five delays along the way. Small businesses have paid the price of this inept management. Many questions remain, including this straightforward one: How many small businesses are enrolled?”

During the recent September 18, 2014 hearing of the Small Business Subcommittee on Health and Technology, Chairman Chris Collins (R-NY) specifically asked the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) witness, Director of State Exchange Group, Mayra Alvarez, about the SHOP enrollment data, yet the administration was still unable to provide the information, despite repeated claims of transparency. Beginning in January, Chairman Graves has repeatedly pressed the administration to provide data on the enrollment and updated compliance timeline of federal or state SHOPs, but the requests have gone unanswered. A June 2013 GAO report requested by Chairman Graves confirmed the administration was ill-equipped for the implementation of the SHOPs, as evidenced by the program’s track record since. The Committee’s first hearing on the SHOPs mismanagement took place in December 2013.

The SHOPs challenges have occurred while small businesses are grappling with rising health insurance costs; in fact, costs are increasing for nearly two-thirds of small businesses that provide health insurance to their employees. And the National Federation of Independent Business found that 64 percent of small business owners paid more per employee for health insurance in 2013 than in 2012.

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