Software and hardware upgrades put in place since late October have been effective, said Jeffrey Zients, the Obama aide overseeing the repair effort to the online portal for health insurance enrollment in more than 30 states.
“HealthCare.gov on Dec. 1 is night and day from where it was on Oct. 1,” when the health insurance exchanges debuted, Zients said during a conference call with reporters Sunday. “While we still have work to do, we’ve made significant progress with HealthCare.gov working smoothly for the vast majority of consumers.” The website can now handle 50,000 users at a time, which was the original goal, and 800,000 visitors a day, he said.
The early consumer experience of Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges was characterized by crashes, error messages, long wait times and faulty information, threatening the rollout of Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement.
December could now prove a crucial month for the first year of enrollment via the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance marketplaces. Consumers who want health coverage in effect on Jan. 1 have until just Dec. 23 to select a health plan via the exchanges — including many whose current policies don’t meet Obamacare standards and can’t be renewed for next year.
A crush of consumers scrambling to get health insurance for the New Year could test the rigor of the administration’s fixes, and Zients said traffic to HealthCare.gov spiked over the Thanksgiving holiday compared a typical weekend, although he didn’t provide figures.