(Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama’s new health secretary said the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is expanding U.S. insurance coverage and lowering consumers’ health-care costs. She declined to predict how well the program’s enrollment system will work in November, when consumers begin a new year of sign-ups.

Taking questions yesterday from reporters for the first time at a White House news conference, HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said insurance programs created by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act have reduced the nation’s uninsured population by 26 percent. She called the reduction “the most important number” to measure the law’s success.

“For those of you covering the private sector, any market that grows at that rate in its first year, those results would be considered pretty extraordinary,” she said.

This year, Burwell said, “there are literally deadlines every single day, being met” for the completion of upgrades and testing of the federal insurance exchange HealthCare.gov. While the department is “learning our lessons from last year, both positively and negatively,” she declined to say directly whether the project is on schedule for next year’s open sign-up period that begins on Nov. 15.

Getting prepared

“Day to day, we are taking every step we can, step by step, to continue on our process and be ready for open enrollment,” she said. She said she didn’t have an enrollment goal for 2015, saying her staff is analyzing a Congressional Budget Office estimate that 13 million people should sign up.

Consumers shouldn’t expect a much better experience than last year, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a group that has opposed the Affordable Care Act.

“They will enroll more than one person on the first day so it’ll be better than last year,” he said in a phone interview. “It will not be Travelocity, and the initial advertisement for the shopping experience continues to be completely unfulfilled.”

In a promising sign for the law, Burwell said costs for uncompensated care at hospitals are projected to fall by about $5.7 billion this year, thanks to expanded insurance coverage. Her department derived the figure in part from financial reports from Community Health Systems Inc., HCA Holdings Inc., Tenet Healthcare Corp. and Lifepoint Hospitals Inc.

All four publicly traded hospital chains have reported large reductions in uninsured admissions from states that took advantage of the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid, the program for low-income people.

See also: More carriers flock to PPACA exchanges

Burwell took over the Health and Human Services Department on June 5, replacing Kathleen Sebelius, the former Kansas governor who resigned after enrollment for the law’s first year concluded in April. While 8 million people initially signed up for coverage, Sebelius accepted blame for computer failures that prevented most customers from enrolling until December.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Wayne in Washington at awayne3@bloomberg.net

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PPACA to save hospitals $5.7B this year

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