More than 400 software glitches plaguing the healthcare.gov site have been fixed, according to the White House. The system is said to be running more than 90 percent of the time with a rate of less than 1 percent error messages, Bloomberg Businessweek reported.
"HealthCare.gov on December 1st is night and day from where it was on October 1st," said management fixer Jeff Zients.
Zient's claim that the site can handle 50,000 visitors at a time "hasn't been proven in the real world, and U.S. officials aren't certain the site will hold up," according to a report from Bloomberg's Alex Wayne and Alex Nussbaum.
Americans have until Dec. 23 to purchase healthcare plans that start on the first of the year. The site is expected to have even heavier traffic compared with the first two months, so healthcare.gov will be put to the test.
The site's current error rate is still "sky-high" in comparison to commercial websites, according to Bloomberg.
"Until the enrollment process is working from end-to-end, many consumers will not be able to enroll in coverage," America's Health Insurance Plans President and CEO Karen Ignagni said in a news release.
In a signal that the site is still rife with glitches, the administration hasn't yet abandoned the initial pilot program that bypasses healthcare.gov and allows insurance shoppers to enroll in subsidized coverage directly with insurance companies, Bloomberg reported. The pilot program is something of a "Plan B" if the real site doesn't work in time.
The federal site's small business exchange has also been put on hold, with the White House saying that the program, which is designed for companies with fewer than 50 employees, won't be up and running for another year. The small business insurance marketplace was supposed to go live on Oct. 1.
The real gage for healthcare.gov's success will be how many people have been successfully enrolled in the program by March 31, the deadline for people to buy health insurance and avoid the tax penalty, according to Bloomberg.
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