Obamacare Gets More Users and Upgrades

Healthcare.gov, the troubled Obamacare website, is getting better every day. But it’s still not up-to-speed and may be slow for some users because of the increasing number of people logging on.

On a conference call with reporters Friday, Jeff Zients, the tech wiz brought to overhaul the site, said, “…we clearly need the system to perform reliably with fast response times at higher volumes. This is a key focus of our work now, which we are addressing with additional hardware and infrastructure upgrades, starting this weekend.”

The technical team apparently is on target to make the  website function as it should by the end of November. And this weekend’s work will go a long way to making that happen, according to Zients. He said, “We will be bringing additional servers online, as well as additional database capacity and data storage. With these upgrades, we will significantly increase the system’s capacity and allow us to maintain good speed and response times at higher volumes.”

KFF

In the meantime, the Kaiser Family Foundation is moving along with its wholehearted embrace of Obamacare. It launched a Spanish-language consumer resource center  that explains the ins-and-outs of the Affordable Care Act and offers a Spanish-language subsidy calculator. You can use the calculator to estimate health insurance premiums and tax credits according to your zip code, income, family size, age and tobacco use.