Describing a website as “stable since yesterday” might be considered damning through faint praise, but for the officials working to fix the troubled HealthCare.gov website, it was worth mentioning.
CMS Communications Director Julie Bataille also declared during a Tuesday call with reporters that “error rates are low” for the site, without providing numbers.
Bataille said the contractors that built the site and the extra technicians called in to help are looking at how fast the site's pages are loading for users and whether its buttons are allowing users to navigate smoothly from page to page.
“What we are seeing happen as we are putting the fixes in place, the number of error messages are decreasing,” Bataille said.
During a House hearing last week, CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner apologized for the problem-plagued rollout of the website. She struck a more optimistic tone at a hearing, Tuesday, pointing out that nearly 700,000 applications have been filled out by individuals through the federal and state exchanges. She also indicated that they anticipate enrolling 800,000 individuals in October and November.
Those numbers were called out in a question and answer session with Bataille, who would not be pinned down with a number.
“Those projections are constantly changing,” Bataille said. She did confirm, however, the 800,000 figure would include enrollment of adults and children to state Medicaid programs.
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