Enrollment In Obamacare’s Federal Exchange, So Far, May Only Be In ‘Single Digits’ (+video)

On October 1, Obamacare’s subsidized insurance exchanges went live. Most of the exchange websites crashed on the first day, a development that led some of the law’s supporters to conclude that there was overwhelming demand for Obamacare’s insurance products. But the Obama Administration isn’t releasing figures as to the number of Americans who have actually signed up for exchange-based coverage. “Very, very few people that we’re aware of have enrolled in the federal exchange,” said one anonymous insurance industry official to the Washington Post. “We are talking single digits.”

Exchange agencies walk back high-traffic hype

Other exchanges have had to pare down their initial statistics. Covered California, that state’s subsidized insurance exchange, initially claimed that its website had received 5 million hits on October 1. They later had to revise that number down 87 percent, to 645,000. KUSI-TV in San Diego is reporting that not one policy has yet been sold on the California exchange.

According to Megan McArdle, high traffic alone doesn’t explain why the federal healthcare.gov website is having so many issues. For example, the drop-down boxes for security questions aren’t working, which shouldn’t be a traffic-related problem. “The drop-down thing is mystifying,” a programmer source told McArdle. It “could very easily be because deadline pressure caused them to take some shortcuts that impacted their ability to scale.”

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