Docs Uncovered Reveal Zients Milestone Set In September
HealthCare.gov’s appointed crisis coordinator, Jeff Zients, announced today that by Nov. 30, he intends for the website to be able to handle 50,000 simultaneous users. National Journal reports, “By the end of the month, the site will be able to handle 50,000 users at once - the goal it was supposed to meet when it launched, Zients said." Emails released last night confirmed that the goal of 50,000 simultaneous users is not a new one; top officials were scrambling to test to those traffic levels just prior to the October 1 launch.
* On Sept. 26, HealthCare.gov project manager Henry Chao emailed various officials at CMS, “I would say that post October 1st the peaks will be at 50k or greater and the Get Insured side for consumers will be at least the same and likely more…" (Doc # QSSI-ECC-0000023063)
* In fact, on Sept. 29, the administration wrote, “Our plan is to have 54k applications/hr completed." (Doc # QSSI-ECC-0000058360)
* Emails within CMS from September 29 state, “We’ll be continue to test today, tomorrow & beyond until we reach at least 10k concurrent users, and eventually 50k." (Doc # QSSI-ECC-0000066581)
* White House Chief Technology Officer Todd Park emailed on Sept. 26, “What happens after the 16,000/60,000-70,000 threshold is reached?" (Doc # QSSI-ECC-0000058362)
The last time this target was set, the website failed to deliver. Will it work this time? And if the website finally does work, how will Americans react to the rate shock ?
