by John Sexton
A new estimate by an independent web analysis firm says public interest in Healthcare.gov is waning.
According to the Washington Post “The number of visitors to the federal government’s HealthCare.gov Web site dropped 88 percent between Oct. 1 and Oct. 13…” The site reportedly drew 9.4 million unique visitors in its first week of operation but in the 2nd week “the site attracted 4.1 million visitors, or less than half of what it garnered its first week.”
The Obama administration has repeatedly refused to say how many people have signed up for coverage on the federal exchange. Their sole response to questions about enrollment is to cite the total number of unique visitors to the website and claim this shows “intense demand.” But looked at over time it is clear that demand is declining fairly quickly, at about the pace one might expect box office receipts of a new film to drop off week after week.
No doubt some of the drop off is the result of frustration by consumers unwilling to spend hours trying to access their accounts. What remains to be seen is whether those individuals will come back and what message might bring them back.
Published estimates for the amount of time it will take to fix the current problems with the federal exchange range from a couple weeks to several months.