After a week’s worth of technical improvements to the Affordable Care Act’s website, HealthCare.gov officials announced that the site’s error rate is now down to less than 1%.That number meets the Obama Administrations initial goals, set long before the site’s October 1st launch.
Former White House Budget Director Jeff Zients, who was brought in by the Obama administration to oversee the technical fixes, pointed to the low error rate as a sign of progress. He reported that more than 200 bugs have been fixed in the past month, with 60 priority level fixes occurring in the last week.
The assembled tech team recently added new visual guides, which will help consumers compare different healthcare plans. The guides will enhance user experience and also improve the overall design of the website, making it more functional on the technical end.
In other good news for Obamacare, HealthCare.gov experienced no unscheduled outages during the past week. Zients said “The changes and improvements we’ve made over the past few weeks are having a positive impact on system performance and user experience.”
Zients went on to say that “for most users, speed and response time were generally good and error rates low.” Page load times are currently down to one second, according to Zients.
The Obama administration set a November 30th deadline to resolve the technical issues and have the website running smoothly. While Zients realistically expects that the team may encounter more bugs over the next few weeks, the site is already running smoothly for the majority of users.
The tech team is also planing to focus on increasing capacity over the next few weeks. They will add additional servers and increase database and storage capacity. Currently, HealthCare.gov is capable of handling 20,000 to 25,000 users at the same time. Over the next few weeks, the number of people enrolling online is expected to increase, week by week. In order to avoid more problems down the road, the team is working to expand the capabilities of the site ahead of the increased traffic load.
With all the negative reporting and naysaying, too many people are under the impression that they cannot use the website. That’s not true. In fact, many people have already used healthcare.gov to find affordable health insurance and most users report that their overall experience is positive. Don’t let all of the rumors and negativity keep people from accessing the website. The site works and is getting better every day!