Dive Brief:
- Just one week into open enrollment for 2017, HealthCare.gov is already struggling to keep up with customers' online enrollment attempts, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
- Enrollees are often being placed in "online waiting rooms" on the site, which are used when the site is reaching its capacity, to keep users from crashing the system, the report says.
- Enrollment workers have noted the issue is arising unusually early in the season, and that the "waiting rooms" brought on by site capacity have previously been experienced primarily around sign-up deadlines, rather than at the beginning of the 3-month window.
Dive Insight:
The problem indicates that health insurance is in high demand. It is only affecting those attempting to log in to complete applications, not those who are just browsing the site, so it clearly relates to enrollments.
However, a direct comparison was not provided. CMS said there were 1.15 million applications submitted during the first seven days of enrollment last year, whereas more than 500,000 applications were submitted in the first four days of enrollment this year, which suggests a lower daily average.
The waiting could be related to an apparent glitch--an issue to which the site is no stranger, having been famously plagued with problems during its initial rollout and afterward.
CMS officials reported a "periodic" use of waiting rooms, and an intermittent issue with the website that is in the process of being resolved.
The heaviest use of the site may have yet to come, once the distraction of the election is passed and outreach reaches its peak from the federal government and other groups.
It remains to be seen whether HHS will be correct in its projection that enrollment for 2017 will amount to about 13.8 million people, which would be an increase of 1.1 million people on top of the 12.7 million that existed in 2016, and roughly the same percentage of growth that was seen last year. Projections have been off the mark before, with officials having estimated that enrollment in ACA plans would have been twice as high as it actually was for 2016, though coverage is about where it was expected to land overall.