HealthCare.gov managers want consumers to give the enrollment system another chance.

The team at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services in charge of fixing the problem-plagued exchange site believes the site is now working reasonably well, Julie Bataille, a CMS rep, said Tuesday during a media conference call.

CMS will be sending e-mails to 275,000 consumers who’ve gotten stuck at some point in the application process after Oct. 1, Battaille said.

The notices will encourage consumers to return to HealthCare.gov to complete the application process.

The e-mails will go out in waves to avoid the possibility all 275,000 consumers return at once and potentially crash the site all over again, Bataille said.

Bataille said HealthCare.gov managers also have made other changes, including a problem tracking system and a feature that lets brokers add unique identifier codes to applications.

Bataille said CMS is also working on posting HealthCare.gov activity figures by the end of the week.

She declined to comment on Wall Street Journal estimates that fewer than 50,000 people have used the HealthCare.gov system to formally enroll in private Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act exchange health plans.

The Washington Post suggested CMS will use the number of applications completed to measure activity rather than the number of completed enrollment transactions.

Bataille noted that payments for coverage that starts Jan. 1 aren’t due yet, and that some people may have completed every part of the enrollment process except for paying for coverage.

See also:

Instant Insights /

HealthCare.gov wants you to come back

More From HR Executive

Related Stories

Recommended For You