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November 14, 2013

Obama Admin: 106,000 Enrollments in Health Exchanges' 1st Month 
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The Obama administration has unveiled low enrollment figures for the
first month of the troubled healthcare exchange rollout. Just more than
106,000 people signed up for insurance on the federal and state-run
marketplaces. The White House had initially predicted first-month
enrollment of more than 500,000. At a House committee hearing on
Wednesday, administration officials said improvements to the federal
healthcare website are continuing.

Todd Park, White House Chief Technology Officer: "The web site is
getting better each week as we work to improve its performance, its
stability and its functionality. As a result, more and more individuals
are successfully creating accounts, logging in and moving on to apply
for coverage and shop for plans. We have much work still to do, but are
making progress at a growing rate."

Henry Chao, Deputy CIO, Centers For Medicare and Medicaid Services: "We
underestimated the volume of users who would attempt to concurrently
access the system initially in October and we immediately addressed the
capacity issues in the first few days and continue to actively work on
further improving performance and creating a better user experience."
At Wednesday's hearing, Republican Rep. Darrell Issa said the federal
healthcare website poses dangers to users' personal information. Issa's
comments drew a rebuke from Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings.

Rep. Darrell Issa: "Hackers, in fact, may have already or may soon find
those vulnerabilities. They may soon find your social security number or
your personal information because there was no integrated security
testing before the launch."

Rep. Elijah Cummings: "Now they are attempting to use the congressional
oversight process to scare Americans away from the website by once again
making unsupported assertions about the risks to their personal medical
information."

 

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