Jeffrey Zients, a former Obama Administration budget official in line to become the president's chief economic adviser Jan. 1 and the man tapped to oversee repairs to Healthcare.gov, has reported both progress and additional obstacles in his quest to get the site running properly by Nov. 1, according to a report in The New York Times.
Healthcare.gov, the website established to allow uninsured Americans to purchase individual coverage under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, has been plagued by technical difficulties since its Oct. 1 launch.
Two shutdowns of the Verizon data center that hosts the website last week added to the challenge. "Make no mistake," Mr. Zients told The Times. "The hardware failure was a setback and was extremely frustrating."
However, Mr. Zients has overseen some measurable improvement. Page load time is now one second, down from eight seconds in the weeks following the website's launch, according to the report.
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