The Affordable Care Act’s online health insurance marketplace is unlikely to be up to speed by the end of the month as the White House promised, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.
An anonymous official with knowledge of the project told the Post that HealthCare.gov is still unable to handle high web traffic. The website struggles when more than 20,000 to 30,000 users log on at once, which is about half the website’s intended capacity, according to the official.
A spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services downplayed the challenges, telling the Post that the technical issues affecting the website “are a snapshot of November 12th, not November 30th.”
Federal officials said last month that two of the website’s glitches had already been fixed. The anonymous official also told the Post that technical workers aim to streamline the online exchange within the next two to three weeks so that it can handle additional queries from insurers and call centers determining customers’ eligibility for federal subsidies.
The Obama administration is expected to release official enrollment data for the online exchange this week.
