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 The reconfigured HealthCare.gov insurance marketplace will go live
Sunday night before a three-month open enrollment period that begins
Nov. 15, during which existing policyholders can change their
coverage.
Administration officials said on Sunday they will get it right this
time, with a website that will make it easier to shop for coverage,
and enough computing capacity, call-center help and other resources
to handle re-enrollment of all current policyholders.
"We are strongly encouraging our customers to return to
HealthCare.gov ... Shop and compare. The majority will be able to
save money," particularly those who may have overlooked available
federal tax credits last year, said Kevin Counihan, chief executive
officer of the federal health insurance marketplace.
New features were added to the website last month, and more will be
available by Monday for people to begin shopping for coverage. The
actual enrollment period begins Saturday and lasts until February
15.
 The president's signature health reform law, formally known as the
Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act but better known as
Obamacare, got off to a rocky start last fall because of technical
problems with a Web-based marketplace where people could shop for
private policies.
Those glitches were smoothed out over time, and as of mid-August 7.3
million people had purchased insurance through the federal insurance
marketplace or state-based systems.
But the troubles with the federal marketplace and some of the
state-based systems handed Republican opponents of Obamacare a
potent weapon to criticize the roll-out of a program they continue
to challenge.
To head off a repeat, Counihan and other Department of Health and
Human Services officials said in a phone call with journalists they
were adding a thousand additional call center workers for the open
enrollment period, bringing the total to 14,000.
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In addition, the website has been revised to include features that
users have demanded.
Chief among them is the ability for a potential customer to "window
shop" and compare policies after entering only a limited amount of
information -- rather completing an extensive questionnaire.
"We believe this will be the most popular place on the site," and
perhaps even lighten the computing load by allowing consumers to
make up their mind before moving to the more data-intensive process
of actually signing up, said Andy Slavitt, a deputy administrator of
the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services.
Policyholders will be automatically re-enrolled in existing policies
if they don't make changes.
But analysis over the past year indicated that many enrollees
overlooked potential benefits while others purchased policies that
were more expensive than they needed.
"Our goal is for people to come back and update their information
and be sure they are getting the best deal possible," Slavitt said.
(Editing by Eric Walsh)
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