The horrendous rollout of Obamacare last Oct. 1 was even worse than the administration has revealed, with just one person able to enroll on healthcare.gov, according to new documents uncovered by a public watchdog group.
A 106-page document obtained May 1 by Judicial Watch from the Department of Health and Human Services also showed that a top official was so happy that she thought a second person had succeeded in signing up on day one that she sent out a celebratory email.
“On October 1, 2013, at the end of the first day (4:30), the Senior Advisor at Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Brigid M. Russell, sent out an email to her staff with a subject line celebrating ‘2 enrollments!’ The body copy of the email read: ‘We have our second official FFM enrollment!’” Judicial Watch revealed in their report provided to Secrets.
And on the second day, 48 percent of registrations failed, and most on the site were stuck repeatedly hitting the “refresh” button, attempting to get it to work.
After spending hundreds of millions of dollars to set up the website and seeing it respond poorly, the administration would only concede to errors and now brags that 8 million have succeeded in signing up for the health insurance site.
But the details of just how bad it worked are only now being revealed in the Judicial Watch documents. The documents were recovered under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.
“Once again, Judicial Watch is able to get information through FOIA that no one else had gotten — the specifics about the unmitigated failure of the Obamacare healthcare.gov collapse,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The Obama administration tried to cover this up, Congress failed to follow through, but we managed to get the truth about the $667 billion Obamacare website. Imagine what would have happened to Obamacare if the American people knew only one person was able to enroll on its first day? What other Obamacare failures is President Obama hiding?” added Fitton in a statement.
Here are the other details in the report from Judicial Watch:
Editor’s note: Judicial Watch is representing the Washington Examiner in the newspaper’s federal lawsuit seeking access to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau records under FOIA.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected].
