A Bleak First Week: 99.6% Of Healthcare.gov Visitors Did NOT Enroll In Obamacare

Clarification: The reference to enrollments in this article requires clarification. During Week One, 36,000 consumers completed the eligibility application on Healthcare.gov, rather than fully enrolled in a plan as was originally suggested. Completion of this application is required before consumers are able to compare healthcare options and select a plan. An update on Healthcare.gov’s performance in Week 2 is available here.

Since October 1st, Americans living in the 50 states and Washington, D.C. can purchase healthcare through exchanges as part of the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare.) Little information has been made available by the administration on the level of interest these exchanges have received or more importantly the number of consumers who actually enrolled, although the rollout has been plagued with widespread reports of system outages and bugs.

We prepared the following analysis in order to provide visibility around consumer activity on the various healthcare exchanges since the launch of Obamacare.

Over the course of Obamacare’s first week, 9.5 million people visited healthcare.gov, the federal government’s official healthcare website and the de facto exchange for residents of two thirds of the states. [...] Unfortunately, what started as a fire hose of interest, resulted in only a small trickle of actual healthcare enrollments.