Remember all those headlines about the "milions" of people swamping the new Obamacare exchange sites and how that explained why the "glitches" appeared and how this proves the American people are so desparate for the insurance... well, the truth appears to be leaking out. As Politico reports, California’s health insurance exchange reported - wrongly - that it had received 5 million hits on its website the first day of Obamacare. State officials said the real number was only about a tenth of that, or 645,000. Is it any wonder that fewer Americans trust other Americans than ever before [5]?
Via Politico, [6]
Dana Howard, a spokesman for Covered California, as the state exchange is known, said internal miscommunication about the numbers caused the error. “Someone misspoke and thought it was indeed 5 million hits. That was incorrect," the paper quoted him as saying.
California has an ambitious goal of signing up about 2 million people for Obamacare – a big chunk of the seven million the White House wants to get covered in the health insurance exchanges the first year.
...
Like most states, California’s exchange had a rough first day, with computer problems and temporary halts to enrollment and online insurance shopping. Officials had cited the high volume e- the 5 million – as a reason the $313-million online system was so troubled. Glitches and delays persisted on Wednesday.
Federal officials have also been blaming higher than anticipated traffic for the snarls of the website of the federally-operated exchanges serving three dozen states.