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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' main landing web page for HealthCare.gov has experienced myriad problems since it was unveiled.
WASHINGTON - The Obama Administration revealed Wednesday that just 26,794 Americans signed up for private health insurance through Obamacare in October using the administration's floundering healthcare.gov website.
The total was 106,185 if enrollments through 14 state-based websites, including New York's relatively successful site, are included.
The administration had projected that nearly 500,000 people would sign up in the first month of President Obama's signature program.
In releasing the numbers, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius promised that the program will get better, quickly.
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"We expect enrollment will grow substantially throughout the next five months," Sebelius said. "They're also numbers that will grow as the website ... continues to make steady improvements."
© Jonathan Ernst / Reuters/REUTERS
President Obama has been heavily criticized for the faulty rollout of what many say is his signature piece of legislation.
Critics of Obamacare seized on the administration's failure to deliver on meeting its enrollment goals.
"While the Obama White House is sure to blame the poor enrollment numbers on the many unacceptable tech glitches that have frustrated Americans, I maintain that the larger reason Obamacare has failed is because it was conceived based on a lie that Americans could keep their healthcare plans and has failed to address our number one healthcare problem in America: soaring costs," said Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus.
The lackluster numbers came on the same day the President's top tech official said he doesn't know what it will cost to fix the glitches that had frustrated users of the healthcare.gov site.
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Testifying before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee 16 days before a self-imposed Nov. 30 deadline for improving the site, White House Chief Technology Officer Todd Park said it can still handle only at most 25,000 users at once. The initial goal was that the site would service as many as 60,000 visitors at a time.
"The website is getting better each week," Park insisted, while acknowledging "much work" remains.
J. Scott Applewhite/ASSOCIATED PRESS
"We expect enrollment will grow substantially throughout the next five months," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said. "They're also numbers that will grow as the website ... continues to make steady improvements."
The White House agreed Tuesday night to allow Park to testify before the panel after initially refusing. The committee subpoenaed him earlier this month.
Administration technology officials testified that the site, a clearinghouse for people to shop for private insurance available under the Obamacare program, cost more than $600 million to launch, but said they did not know what the all-out effort to repair it has cost.
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"That's a key question," said David Powner, a Government Accountability Office official focused on information technology management.
Republicans on the committee, the fourth congressional panel to hold an Obamacare hearing in the last few weeks, were not satisfied.
"This was a monumental mistake to go live and effectively explode on the launch pad," said the panel's Chairman, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.). "Whether you like Obamacare or not, taxpayer dollars were wasted."
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