Imagine if the website was operating properly.
Obamacare Said to Take In Almost 500,000 Applications
By Alex Wayne, Julianna Goldman & Shannon Pettypiece - Oct 20, 2013 11:38 AM ET .
Almost 500,000 Americans have submitted applications for health insurance through the online exchanges being run by the federal government and 14 states, according to an Obama administration official.
Consumer use of healthcare.gov has been stymied by technical glitches since it went live Oct. 1. The site is the government’s online portal for people looking for new health plans under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, which seeks to insure as many as 7 million people by March. Workers and contractors at the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have been working to fix it.
About 8.6 million people visited the federal website in the first week, running into software problems and long waits that prevented them, in many cases, from even registering to check out insurance offerings. At one point, the site posted error messages in at least 24 states. Meanwhile, independent, state-run exchange websites have seen far fewer problems.
“We are seeing progress” with the federal exchange, said Joanne Peters, an HHS spokeswoman, in an Oct. 18 e-mail. “Wait times to begin the online process have been virtually eliminated, and more consumers are creating accounts, completing applications and ultimately enrolling in coverage.”
The administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, didn’t provide a breakdown between the federal site and the exchanges run independently by 14 states. The government has said it will release enrollment figures from healthcare.gov monthly, starting in mid-November.
Federal officials have declined to publicly discuss the problems with healthcare.gov or to outline plans to fix it in detail, drawing criticism from Republican opponents in Congress.
more:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-20/obamacare-said-to-take-in-almost-500-000-applications.html
DO SOMETHING!
| 