The Obamacare roll-out has clearly been a rough start, but website woes are just the tip of the iceberg. Technical challenges may be the least of the problems Obamacare is causing.

The first shock to many has been the realization that if you like your health insurance plan you likely cannot keep it. The reason is simple: Obamacare makes it illegal for your insurance provider to sell your current plan. This is true not just for individual plans, the kind that are currently being cancelled, but also for many employer-sponsored plans. In fact, this is true for the vast majority of plans provided by small employers who employ fewer than 50 employees.

President Obama recently said the only change for employer plans was that the plans would include new consumer protections and cost less. That sounds good but is not at all what I am seeing.

As an insurance broker, I am reviewing small group plans every day and the vast majority will see higher premiums for less coverage as soon as they renew their plans in 2014.

The political reality of what I just said is clearly hitting home with the recent announcement from the Obama administration that you can now keep your plan if the insurance company and state insurance regulators allow you to do so. It does appear that this will buy those with Anthem individual coverage in Maine a little more time before having to switch to Obamacare-compliant plans.

That doesn’t completely insulate policyholders from the effect of the federal law. Rates will increase partially to account for new taxes and fees imposed on the insurance companies and partly because the introduction of a federal reinsurance program under Obamacare undermines a more effective state reinsurance solution.

That isn’t to say that this opportunity to keep an individual plan a little longer won’t help. I was just looking at options for a client who owns a small restaurant and has an individual Anthem plan for himself and his wife. Moving to an Obamacare-compliant plan in his case translates to a near tripling of his rates, from about $400 a month to more than $1,100 a month.

The unfortunate reality is that this doesn’t solve the problem; it only delays some of the pain.

It seems obvious to me that this latest policy change is simply a political move to set up insurance companies for the fall. I can hear the next speech, “Make no mistake, I said you could keep your plan, but those darn insurance companies wouldn’t let you.”

Here are two reasons I don’t think this helps Obamacare in the end:

First, this latest attempt to honor the promise that you can keep your insurance plan doesn’t help Obamacare’s impact on a signature piece of the law, COOPs. COOPs or “Consumer Oriented and Operated Plans” are the compromise for a “public option.”

If you think back to the drafting of the law, many supporters wanted a government-run health insurance system. This was met with great resistance and became a push for a government-run plan or “public option” in addition to private plans. This also met great resistance. The result was the inclusion of COOPs, new insurance companies established as nonprofit companies, financed by sizable federal loans.

COOPs must sell 75 percent of the plans through the Obamacare exchanges. There are two things essential for COOPs: a functioning enrollment process and individuals leaving their pre-Obamacare plans. The enrollment process at healthcare.gov has been thoroughly bungled, and allowing people to keep their plans only further undermines COOPs.

The second reason the latest policy change won’t make a difference is because the impact on small employers is unstoppable. This is not a market that can turn on a dime.

The requirements Obamacare imposes on insurance plans are so significant that they have literally taken years to implement. Just the regulatory filing deadline for 2014 plans was July of 2013.

There is a lot more that can be said about the effect on small employer health plans, but there are two key points to remember: This is a much bigger market than the individual market and will impact far more people in unfortunate ways.

The pain for small employers will last for a long time as employers renew at different times. Every month of 2014 will affect a new group of small businesses. Some will benefit from the changes, but what I am seeing tells me that the vast majority, probably 90 percent, will not. The biggest hit will come in the fall of 2014, right around election time.

In the end, I predict that Obamacare’s supporters will soon yearn for the days when a poorly functioning website was the worst of their problems.

Joel Allumbaugh is the director of the Center for Health Reform Initiatives of The Maine Heritage Policy Center.