20 days to go to sign up through HealthCare.gov

More Americans every day are finding quality, affordable coverage on the Health Insurance Marketplace. Today, we announced that enrollment in the Marketplace continued to rise in February to a five-month total of 4.2 million. These numbers demonstrate that our aggressive outreach is helping to make a difference –with millions of Americans now enjoying the peace of mind that comes with new coverage.

And we are busy preparing to handle an anticipated surge in enrollment as we approach the end of March - the deadline for consumers seeking coverage on the Marketplace.

HealthCare.gov continues to perform well. The site is supporting hundreds of thousands of consumer visits per day –and people are seeking information, completing applications, shopping and enrolling every day. We are welcoming new and returning consumers to the Marketplace to find the plan that’s right for them.

The site’s error rate remains low – less than 0.5%; the site is loading fast –with average response times of well under half a second.

Consumer Improvements

As we head into the final weeks of open enrollment we have continued our efforts to improve the consumer experience in a number of ways: we have new account creation screens –streamlining that first step in the process from five screens to two; we’ve added help text to respond to common questions consumers have; and we have worked to add system capacity to be able to handle even more volume than we’ve seen to date.

Staffing Up

But we know that enrollment is more than a website, and many consumers are seeking personal assistance. Beyond the website, we’ve geared up for an anticipated surge across our entire operation – we’ve added 2,000 representatives to answer phones at our 24/7 call center; we’ve increased training for all of them, including 800 who are bilingual to help consumers in Spanish; we have more than 27,000 trained in-person assisters across the country, and more than 8,000 enrollment destinations, including Community Health Centers and Enrollment Storefronts.

We are prepared to handle increased volume and encourage consumers to check out their options now and enroll by March 31.

In everything we’re doing, we’re continuing to work to ensure that every American who wants to enroll in affordable coverage by the end of the open enrollment period—March 31, 2014 – is able to do so—and can join millions of other Americans in enjoying the security and peace of mind that comes with having quality health coverage.