DHAKA: The Obama administration has said barely 27,000 Americans enrolled for health insurance through its troubled federal website in the first month.

About 106,000 people were insured in total, most of them through the state-run websites.

The administration originally estimated nearly half a million people would sign up in the first month.

Democrats reportedly expressed frustration about the botched rollout in a White House meeting on Wednesday.

The federal website, used in 36 US states, has been bedeviled by glitches since its 1 October launch.

The administration has pledged that the portal will be "running smoothly" for a "vast majority" of users by the end of November.
Website `improving`

Wednesday`s figures from the US health department also showed nearly 400,000 Americans had qualified for Medicaid, a government medical programme for the poor that was expanded by the healthcare law.

About 40% of people in this category were said to have come through the federal website.

Nearly one million people, meanwhile, had managed to check via the website if they were eligible for government subsidies towards the insurance, but had not selected a plan, according to the administration.

The White House`s chief technology officer, Todd Park, told a congressional oversight hearing on Wednesday that the system`s response times have improved.

But there is a long way to go - health insurance enrolment thus far is a tiny fraction of the seven million people the Obama administration has projected will sign up by the end of March.

The difficult launch of the website has provided Republicans with plenty of ammunition against the law, which they tried to delay or defund through a partial government shutdown last month.

The White House is also facing harsh criticism over insurance companies` mass cancellation of policies that do not meet the law`s strict requirements, even though Democratic President Barack Obama had pledged otherwise.

Source: BBC
BDST: 1131 HRS, NOV 14, 2013
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