The Obama administration appears to have avoided a repeat of last year's disastrous open-enrollment kickoff when HealthCare.gov was plagued by technological problems during its first two months of operation.
Nearly half a million individuals signed up for health plans through the federal exchange during the first week of open enrollment this year, HHS announced last Wednesday. Applicants were almost evenly split between those signing up for coverage through HealthCare.gov for the first time and returning customers.
“It's still early and we have a long way to go, but we're off to a solid start,” said HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell, on a call with reporters.
Andy Slavitt, principal deputy administrator of the CMS, said customers encountered some glitches in the opening days, but that the “vast majority” of shoppers had a positive experience and that the site is capable of handling at least 250,000 concurrent users. “We expect there will be more bumps, but have confidence in the team's ability to address each of these bumps promptly,” he said.
Just over 1 million individuals submitted applications through HealthCare.gov during the first week of enrollment, with nearly half of them choosing plans. The federal website had roughly 3.7 million visitors. Just over 1 million potential customers sought information through the federal call center. The average wait time for callers to get assistance was just over three minutes, according to HHS.
The enrollment statistics do not include any data from the District of Columbia and the 14 states that are operating their own enrollment portals. HHS officials indicated that they will be providing more detailed enrollment data about the state and federal exchanges on a monthly basis. Open enrollment runs through Feb. 15.
Not all of the 462,125 individuals who signed up for a health plan will actually obtain insurance. That's because they must follow through with premium payments to activate their coverage. At the close of the first open-enrollment period, HHS initially announced that more than 8 million individuals had signed up for coverage, but that number has since eroded to less than 7 million.
HHS has predicted that between 9 million and 10 million individuals will be enrolled in coverage through the state and federal exchanges in 2015. The Congressional Budget Office has projected 13 million enrollments for next year.
HHS also announced three new partnerships to help with outreach efforts. The agency will work with the National Community Pharmacists Association, Westfield shopping centers and the XO Group to help spread the word about coverage options.
