The weekend relaunch of healthcare.gov has been credited to former acting OMB director Jeffrey Zients, who was brought in after the health care site’s disastrous launch two months ago. But while Zients is expected to exit soon, the White House says don’t expect them to abandon the site.
“Both the president and Secretary [Kathleen] Sebelius think it’s important to have someone whose job it is just to focus specifically on this technology, on the website and getting what we need to do to have the traffic and enrollment numbers,” White House Communications Director Jennifer Palmeri said on Monday’s The Daily Rundown.
Sunday’s reboot brought the site up to a 90 percent functionality. But with Zients set to become director of the National Economic Council in 2014, the White House says the critical oversight role he helped implement won’t be left unfulfilled.
Palmeri also said that while they weren’t focused on driving new traffic to the site, they anticipated that Monday would draw more people to a better-functioning site.
NBC News reports that 100,000 Americans successfully selected health-insurance plans in the federal exchange in November — up from the nearly 27,000 who did so in October.
Watch Chuck Todd’s full interview with Palmeri below.
Jessica Taylor