Enrollment in health insurance plans on the troubled Obamacare website was very small in the first couple of days of operation, with just 248 Americans signing up, according to documents released on Thursday by a US House of Representatives committee. The Obama administration has said it cannot provide enrolment figures from HealthCare.gov because it doesn't have the numbers. The federal website, where residents of 36 states can buy new healthcare plans under President Barack Obama's law, was launched on October 1.
"We do not have any reliable data around enrolment, which is why we haven't given it to date," Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told lawmakers on Wednesday. But the documents, which are labelled "war room" notes and appear to be summaries of issues with the problematic website beginning on October 2, indicate a mere six enrolments had occurred by that morning - the day after the website was launched and almost immediately crashed.
"High capacity on the website, direct enrolment not working," the October 2 notes said. By later that day, "approximately 100" enrolments had taken place. "As of yesterday, there were 248 enrolments," said the notes from the morning of October 3. The documents were released by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which has been demanding information from the administration about the website's problems. The committee is chaired by Representative Darrell Issa, a Republican opponent of Obamacare.