ObamaCare is attracting lots of window shoppers, but not that many buyers.
Figures from the handful of states releasing information show that only a tiny fraction of the people inquiring about President Obama’s controversial, government-mandated insurance have actually agreed to buy it since the policies went on sale Tuesday.
In Connecticut — where ObamaCare was predicted to send prices for individual policies soaring — 498 residents had completed applications for coverage as of midday Thursday, out of 85,000 unique visitors to the Access Health CT Web site and another 4,000 calls to its help line, spokesman Jason Madrak said.
That works out to a minuscule 0.55 percent taking it.
As of Wednesday, Rhode Island reported that 366 people had signed up for ObamaCare, about 1.6 percent of the 19,707 unique visitors to its HealthSource RI Web site, 3,452 calls to its help line and another 82 walk-ins to its “contact center.”
Meanwhile, Kentucky was leading the pack, with 8,309 completed applications representing 6.2 percent of the 117,954 unique visitors to the Kynect Web site and 15,239 calls to its help line as of Thursday morning.
New York, which has logged nearly 30 million visits to its notoriously balky NY State of Health Web site, hasn’t disclosed how many residents have signed up for ObamaCare — even though Obama predicted the program would cut the cost of monthly premiums for individual policies in half.
In a statement late Thursday, NY State of Health Executive Director Donna Frescatore said only that “more than 44,000 people have visited and actively shopped on the site, which includes more than 11,000 as of 1 p.m. today.”
Frescatore also said that additional servers were added to the computer network on Tuesday and Wednesday, “and software upgrades to enhance performance have been completed.”
The federal government is operating Web sites for 36 states that opted not to run their own ObamaCare programs, but has yet to reveal the success of those programs.
A computer-security expert with the McAfee software company said he suspected that hackers were actively working to penetrate the various ObamaCare Web sites to steal users’ identities for theft and fraud schemes.
McAfee’s Gary Davis said ObamaCare customers should make sure the URL for every page they fill out begins with “https” to ensure their connection to the site is secure.