White House fears website collapse

The White House is delaying a planned ObamaCare marketing campaign because it remains fearful that a rush of consumers to the troubled HealthCare.gov website would overwhelm the system.

According to a New York Times report on Wednesday, the Obama administration is trying to strike a balance between the push for a diverse pool of healthcare enrollees, and the reality of what the problem-plagued website can handle.

{mosads}The first month’s enrollment numbers were embarrassingly low because of the website’s problems, and the administration needs a diverse group of young and healthy consumers to sign up so premiums don’t spike in 2015.

The Times report is the latest frustrating news for supporters of the Affordable Care Act, who have consistently been assured by the administration that the website would be able to accommodate the vast majority of consumers by Nov. 30.

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said Tuesday the Obama administration would meet its self-imposed Nov. 30 deadline to have HealthCare.gov running better.

“We are definitely on track to have a significantly different user experience by the end of the month,” Sebelius said on a conference call with state and local elected officials about the ObamaCare rollout.

The Times report seems to cast doubt on that assertion. Officials say the website can presently handle about 50,000 simultaneous users, but worry that the looming enrollment deadline, and promises that the site will be working better, could draw five times that number over the weekend.

HHS left itself a little bit of wiggle room by steering away from specific metrics about the site’s Nov. 30 performance. However, putting a firm date on the fix could magnify any lingering issues the website might have.

Sebelius on Tuesday said that there isn’t “a magic turn-on switch” that could be flipped at the end of the month to solve all of the website’s problems, but argued that progress has been incremental and would lead up to a better website experience on that date.

But those hoping to use coverage they’ve purchased under the healthcare law by Jan. 1 must have purchased a plan by Dec. 23, and the administration desperately needs to release some promising enrollment numbers before the end of the year.

A marketing push could help that push considerably. The insurance industry has also been sitting on a pile of cash it plans to use to get the word out about the federal exchanges but won’t risk spending those dollars until it knows the system can handle the traffic.