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Dying HealthCare.gov bagged JUST SIX registrations on first day

Reports detail startup disaster of Obamacare portal

The much-maligned US HealthCare.gov medical-insurance portal managed to process just six registrations on its first day of availability.

A series of notes [PDF] from the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight (CCIIO) suggest that as problems plagued the healthcare registration site in its opening hours, only a half-dozen new accounts were able to be logged in the portal's opening day.

Subsequent memos from the office show that as the early wrinkles were ironed out of the site, a trickle of new registrations was able to begin. By the second day, registrations had managed to break into triple digits: October 3 memos suggest that all of 248 accounts had been enrolled.

The early problems for the Obamacare portal have been well documented as the hotly debated public insurance platform collapsed under numerous technical gaffes and a flood of early traffic from US citizens seeking to register with the government-backed health-insurance program.

The daily reports, released amid ongoing government investigations into the botched rollout, provide an early snapshot of just how mightily administrators were struggling as the health care portal floundered in its first days.

According to the October 2 and 3 reports, the early headaches for the site included improperly configured data on multiple servers as well as back-end problems which had prevented brokers from registering with the portal.

Other issues detailed in the report include problems connecting with the Experian credit-check service and problems integrating data from the department of Veterans Affairs.

Since the release, White House officials have sought to quell public outcry and criticism by beefing up staffing and enlisting further assistance from experts in helping to bring the portal up to snuff. Thus far, reports have indicated that the reinforcements have included engineers and consultants from Google, Red Hat, and Oracle.

Officials hope that the added manpower and expertise will put an end once and for all to the embarrassing saga. ®

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