WASHINGTON — Fewer than 50,000 people signed up for private health plans on the dysfunctional federal ObamaCare Web site as of last week, according to a new report.
This early tally since HealthCare.gov made its glitch-plagued debut Oct. 1 is but a fraction of the 494,620 people President Obama originally estimated would enroll in the first month.
Between 40,000 to 50,000 people successfully obtained health insurance by navigating the federal Web site used in 36 states, reported The Wall Street Journal.
The number does not include low-income Americans who were able to obtain Medicaid through the federal site.
The distressing results are still a sharp improvement over the bungled opening day, when a mere six people managed to make it through the Web site.
But the slow pace of enrollment is raising alarms because the ObamaCare law won’t be effective unless millions of Americans — especially the young and the healthy — pay for new policies to fund the system.
The only figure provided so far by the administration was an Oct. 24 disclosure that 700,000 people had completed applications in all 50 states, which didn’t indicate how many actually bought insurance plans.
The Department of Health and Human Services refused to confirm the puny enrollment figure reported Monday.
Another report showed enrollment also was low in the 14 states that run their own online ObamaCare health exchanges.
Those states signed up 49,100 people, according to a survey by health-care research and consultancy firm Avalere Health.
The two reports combined point to a national enrollment figure of less than 100,000 people after more than a month.
The administration is counting on signing up 7 million people by the end of the open enrollment period March 31.
The bad PR from the disastrous launch of the federal HealthCare.gov, which continues to malfunction and crash, may have scared off consumers from the state sites as well, said Avalere president Dan Mendelson.
“The technical problems of the Web site and enrollment generally are causing the administration to go much slower on the positive messaging that is necessary to build enthusiasm for the law, and that’s an issue,” he said.
Some state-run exchanges also suffered technical problems, although none on the scale of HealthCare.gov.
For instance, Hawaii delayed its Web site launch until mid-October, while Colorado and Minnesota have also experienced bugs in their exchanges.
The White House has thus far stubbornly resisted releasing enrollment figures.
The first official tally is due this week.
Administration officials for weeks have been trying to lower expectations.
HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius warned a House panel on Oct. 30 that only “a very small number” would be on the rolls initially.
And the early numbers appear to back her up.