WASHINGTON — Add another embarrassment to the ObamaCare ledger.
The administration announced Wednesday it would delay by a year the creation of a special exchange for small businesses.
The online marketplace where small-business owners can buy coverage for their workers already had its rollout postponed from October. It is now scheduled to open in November 2014.
Administration officials said the delay was needed to prioritize repairs to the error-plagued HealthCare.gov Web site.
The change was revealed in an afternoon conference call the day before Thanksgiving — a time likely to generate light news coverage.
“The administration is doing its best to bury the latest confirmation that this law was not ready for prime time,” charged Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.).
Small businesses, which are exempt from the “employer mandate” for large firms with 50 or more workers, can still enroll their employees directly with insurance companies or by filing the old-fashioned way with paper work.
They would be eligible for federal tax breaks later.
Despite the setback, officials insisted they would meet Saturday’s deadline for fixing the HealthCare.gov site for individual consumers.
“We are on track to meet our goal of having the site work for the vast majority of users by the end of the month,” said Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Lowering expectations, she added, “To be clear, Nov. 30 does not represent a relaunch of HealthCare.gov. It is not a magical date. There will be times after Nov. 30 when the Web site, like any Web site, does not perform optimally.”
The site is being upgraded to handle 50,000 users at once.
Those who can’t get through will be put into a waiting line — a “new advanced queuing system” — and be told of the expected wait time or be notified by e-mail when they should return.