Analysis: Only 36K Signed Up for Health Care Through Federal Exchange in First Week of Operation

Millward Brown Digital, a consultancy firm, released an analysis today estimating that only 36,000 people had signed up for insurance through the federal Obamacare exchange website.

According to Millward Brown Digital, there were 9.47 million unique visitors to healthcare.gov from the site’s launch on October 1 through October 5. Of those visitors, 1.3 million left the website for their state-run exchange and 3.72 million attempted to create an account on the site. Only 1.01 million successfully did so.

A total of 271,000 people logged into their created account, 27 percent of those who managed to register. The difficulty logging in made the “I’m having trouble logging in to my marketplace account” page one of the most popular on the site with 214,000 people seeking guidance.

Only 196,000 began the enrollment process, which is over 30 steps long. Most didn’t finish it. Altogether, 36,000 people completed enrollment in an insurance plan. That’s a grand total of 1 percent of people who attempted to register on the federal site, and a lower figure than reported by the Daily Mail, which said 51,000 had enrolled during the first week.

The analysis says that “Healthcare.gov was clearly unprepared to handle the huge spike in traffic witnessed on October 1st when it was visited by .9% (or 1 in 114) of everyone online in the U.S. This is roughly equivalent to the daily traffic on Target.com.”

Via Aaron Blake.