Progress

This morning, Secretary Sebelius testified in front of the House Ways and Means Committee. Much of the discussion was about the problems with the healthcare.gov website.

Thankfully, the coveredca.com website is up and running well. The new stats that came out yesterday indicate that over 179,000 applications have been started, and over a half-million unique visitors went to the site in the last week, over 2 million since launch. According to the LA Times, perhaps Covered California may even do marketing to be clear with Californians that they are open for business, despite what they are getting from the national news.

The call center is also humming with activity, with over 53,000 calls last week, (over 210,000 calls since launch.) The average wait time has decreased, but still is at 3:38 minutes. More improvement is needed there.

Folks spend an average of 15 minutes–but that is likely a wide average, between people with quick questions, and those going through the entire application process. However, that same LA Times article did indicate the heartwarming anecdote that an informal survey of call center workers interacted with someone in tears because of the relief and gratitude from being able to get coverage.

We livetweeted President Obama’s remarks in Boston today, where he contrasted the start of the Affordable Care Act with the beginning of the reforms under Governor Romney in that state, where only 100 people signed up in the first month–but now boasts near-universal coverage.

As the President said, “We are in this together, and we are going to see this through.”