WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has piloted a health insurance exchange for small businesses in five states ahead of a rollout for most of the rest of the nation.

The new portal opened late last month for small companies in Delaware, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey and Ohio. Businesses in those states with less than 50 full-time workers can use the site to purchase coverage for workers for 2015.

Employers can use the soft opening to create accounts, file applications and upload a roster of employees to be insured. They can compare plans and prices when the site opens fully on November 15.

Information about the early user experience will begin a “continuous quality improvement process before the site goes live in mid-November,” blogged Rhett Buttle, director of private sector engagement at the Department of Health and Human Services.

The portal’s planned launch last year under the Affordable Care Act was delayed by technical flaws. Blown deadlines in the site’s creation were an early indicator of forthcoming problems with HealthCare.gov, which serves more than 30 states that aren’t running their own insurance exchanges.

David Chase, health care policy director for Small Business Majority, an advocacy group, called the October soft opening “encouraging.” He said it would allow small business owners in the five states to provide “critical feedback on ways to improve the system, prior to the national online rollout.”

“It will be imperative that the administration listen to all the initial feedback to ensure that the online marketplaces operate as smoothly as possible when it is made available for all states where the federal government is running the small business marketplaces,” he added. “This feedback will go a long way in helping prevent the glitches we saw with the launch of the individual marketplace website last year.”

“The administration’s decision last year to delay the small business marketplace’s online portal was a serious setback for entrepreneurs seeking to take full advantage of the Affordable Care Act,” Chase said. “The marketplaces are one of the most important components of the health care law for small businesses, and having access to it online is imperative if they’re to be robust and ­successful.”

Also last month, a survey found that virtually nine in 10 uninsured Americans are unaware of when the next open enrollment period begins for the public. The poll, conducted for the Kaiser Family Foundation, found that two-thirds of the uninsured say they know “only a little” or “nothing at all” about the online exchanges and just over half are unaware of financial assistance available to help low- and moderate-income people purchase coverage.

Among the broader population, views on the ACA remained similar to prior months, with more people expressing criticism of the law than favorable views. But the majority want Congress to work to improve the law rather than repeal it.

Ahead of the midterm elections, the survey found that the ACA continued to be a second-tier issue, with many voters saying they were tired of hearing candidates talk about it. Just over a quarter (27%) of registered voters said the health care law would be an “extremely important” issue in their vote and about another third (35%) said it would be “very important.” But when asked to choose the most important issue, just 8% picked health care, ranking it behind the economy (16%) and dissatisfaction with government (12%) and similar to other issues like education (10%), the situation in Iraq and Syria (9%), and immigration (6%).

Additionally, 29% of voters did not say that any of these issues are extremely important to their vote, perhaps because no one issue outshines another or they consider other factors more important to their vote, such as the personal characteristics of the candidates.

Disappointment with the law may be reinforced by a new report by the Health Care Cost Institute finding that privately insured Americans spent more on medical services in 2013 even though they used fewer of them. Spending per enrollee in employer health plans grew by 3.9%, continuing the moderate growth trend that began in 2010. But falling utilization helped mask continued growth in health care prices.

The report found that health care spending averaged $4,915 per enrollee in 2013, up $185 from the year before. Out-of-pocket costs, including co-payments and deductibles paid directly by consumers, remained stable as a percentage of overall health spending.

“Price growth for medical services and brand name drugs remained strong in 2013,” said David Newman, the institute’s executive director. “Health spending grew moderately, but that was only because consumers used fewer services.”