Nearly 500K enroll in O-Care in first week

Nearly half a million health plans were selected at HealthCare.gov in the first week of open enrollment, with roughly 220,000 from new customers, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Wednesday.

Federal health officials touted the functionality of the enrollment site, which saw a total of about 1 million plan applications submitted between Nov. 15-21.

{mosads}”We had a solid start,” HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said of the enrollment window, “but we have a lot of work to do every day between now and Feb. 15.”

HHS has received complaints for failing to release metrics from the federal enrollment system for ObamaCare.

In a nod to critics, Burwell announced that the department would release a weekly dashboard of information about enrollment and a more in-depth report every month.

The first fact sheet included an assortment of figures, including call center volume, average call center wait time and total HealthCare.gov users.

A total of 3.7 million people used the site in its first week, including about 1.6 million people who browsed the site’s window shopping feature, officials said.

About 1.1 million people used the call center for personal assistance.

The figures point to improvements in the enrollment site since last year, though the system appears to be receiving lower traffic.

An independent analysis by consulting firm Millward Brown Digital found that HealthCare.gov received about 9.5 million visitors between Oct. 1-5, 2013.  

Only 36,000 were able to receive an eligibility determination — the precursor to picking a plan — a sign of the site’s deep flaws at time.

The website, which serves 36 states, appears to be functioning much better.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Principal Deputy Administrator Andy Slavitt said the site had not experienced any outages in its first week, though some were asked to undergo a brief wait as they tried to access “isolated” parts of the system.

“For the vast majority of consumers, they’ve having a faster, better, more intuitive experience,” Slavitt said on a call with reporters.

“This is mainly the result of listening to feedback … and doing a lot of testing.”

Still, the Obama administration has sought to lower expectations for 2015 enrollment, projecting that a total of 9.1 million people would receive health insurance through the system next year.

The figure was short of the 13 million projected by the Congressional Budget Office.

“We are keeping our goal of 9.1 million effectuated for the entire year. That is what that number is, and we are staying with that number,” Burwell said Wednesday.

Health insurance enrollment typically starts low at the beginning of the sign-up period and builds to a peak around coverage deadlines.

Slavitt predicted that HealthCare.gov would see the most users in the middle of December and middle of February. The enrollment window ends Feb. 15.

HHS will begin automatically re-enrolling existing customers in their old plans starting Dec. 15, officials said.

— Sarah Ferris contributed.

— This story was updated at 11:11 a.m.