It’s dead! Administration officials said they’d successfully squashed the software bug responsible for many of the problems on Healthcare.gov, the troubled federal website that was supposed to be the centerpiece of the Affordable Care Act.
The White House said more than 750,000 visited the federal website before 6 pm ET on Monday alone, and the fix appeared to hold up well under the heavy traffic.
The Health and Human Services Department plans to release data in mid-December with the number of people that successfully signed up so far.
The glitch-ridden rollout caused headaches for consumers who tried to sign up, and humiliation for President Obama. Julie Bataille, spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, confirmed on Monday that developers identified and resolved a technical glitch causing nearly 80% of errors with 834 transaction forms which provide key info about applicants’ identities. The broken feature prevented insurers from receiving accurate enrollment data.
“The bottom line is that we have fixed many of the bugs that led to the 834 issues,” said Bataille.
CMS declined to elaborate on the specific number of users who ran into this problem and advised applicants to contact their providers to double check that payments have been received.
The agency said they’re also making their own calls directly to consumers who enrolled, ensuring they take all necessary steps so coverage kicks in.
A CMS progress report released Sunday said, “While we strive to innovate and improve our outreach and systems for reaching consumers, we believe we have met the goal of having a system that will work smoothly for the vast majority of users.” The Obama administration gave itself a deadline of December 1 to overhaul the system.
According to administration officials, Healthcare.gov now operates correctly about 90% of the time — a vast improvement from its shaky start.
NBC News reported 100,000 Americans successfully purchased coverage through the federal exchange website during the month of November. That’s up significantly from October, when only an estimated 27,000 enrolled.
A mad dash of sign-ups could come in the next three weeks, as consumers have until Dec. 23 to get signed up for coverage that starts January 1, 2014. Enrollment will continue through March, but the coverage for those people would start later.
Sarah Muller