HealthCare.gov website is running more smoothly now, says Obama

The White House said that the worst of the online glitches, crashes and delays may be over for the problem-plagued US government health care website, a key component of President Barack Obama's signature domestic policy initiative.

The stakes are high for Obama who has seen his approval ratings drop sharply since the rocky October 1 rollout of the HealthCare.gov website, threatening his ability to advance his second-term agenda. The website's shaky launch has left Obama's fellow Democrats nervous ahead of next year's elections when control of Congress will be at stake.

The Department of Health and Human Services said Sunday that the website is working more smoothly. But that doesn't mean HealthCare.gov is ready for a clean bill of health.

More than 50,000 people can log on to the website at one time and more than 800,000 will be able to shop for insurance coverage each day, the government estimated in a report released Sunday. If true, it's a dramatic improvement from the system's first weeks, when frustrated buyers watched their computer screen freeze, the website crash and error messages multiply.

Officials acknowledged more work remains to be done on the website that included hundreds of software bugs, inadequate equipment and inefficient management for its national debut two months ago. Federal workers and private contractors have undertaken an intense reworking of the system, but the White House's chief troubleshooter cautioned some users could still encounter trouble.

"The bottom line - HealthCare.gov on December 1 is night and day from where it was on October 1," Jeff Zients told reporters.

HealthCare.gov, which services 36 states, signed up just 27,000 people for health insurance coverage in October, while the 14 states that run their own websites enrolled 79,000. The total of roughly 106,000 was far off the administration's estimate that nearly 500,000 people would enrol within the first month of the six-month enrolment period.