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Meadows Grills Healthcare.gov Officials at Hearing, Low Enrollment Numbers Reflect Obamacare Problems

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JKgHgjnE6s[/youtube]

Nov. 14, 2013. Representative Mark Meadows (NC-11) questioned White House chief technology officer Todd Park and other administration officials today at the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s hearing on the flawed Healthcare.gov website.

“At today’s hearing, I questioned Mr. Park and his colleagues about the administration’s responsibility to the American people to fix the disastrous rollout of Healthcare.gov,” Meadows said.  “According to Mr. Park’s testimony, the website can currently only handle 17,000 accounts per hour.  When I later inquired how many people the website will eventually be able to accommodate at any given time, the officials stated 30,000.  There is a problem with that number: With 50 million people currently uninsured, the system must actually be able to handle a minimum of 43,000 people per hour if all uninsured Americans plan to enroll by January 1, 2014. 

“Enrollment numbers released by the Obama administration today reflect Obamacare’s wide-reaching problems.  The administration initially projected enrolling 800,000 people in the exchanges within the first two months, a figure that was later scaled back to 500,000.  In reality, the numbers released this afternoon show that 106,185 people have enrolled in health insurance plans, and only one-fourth of those enrollments have come through Healthcare.gov’s federal exchanges.  The administration’s enrollment figure also includes people who have selected a plan but not yet purchased it.

“Today’s hearing highlighted the administration’s disappointing decision to once again put politics ahead of the American people by launching the website far before it was ready.  The fact that Henry Chao, Healthcare.gov’s chief project manager and the man in charge of recommending the website for launch, was not included on a memo by the agency’s chief information officer outlining the site’s high-risk security failures demonstrates just how chaotic the entire Healthcare.gov development process has been.  As constituents across my district face premium spikes and lost coverage due to President Obama’s broken promises, the last hurdle they should have to face is a broken website.  They deserve better.”