White House ‘confident’ in HealthCare.gov

The Obama administration is confident in the fixes to HealthCare.gov and doesn’t need a public relations effort to drive consumers to the repaired site, according to White House communications director Jennifer Palmieri.

“We anticipated just because of the delay from the last two months, that today, in particular, would probably be a high volume day,” she said Monday on MSNBC’s “The Daily Rundown with Chuck Todd.”

Todd asked Palmieri if the White House would execute a public relations effort to promote the repaired website.

“If we’re getting a lot of traffic, then we don’t feel the need to drive it. But if we see numbers start to drop off, then we’ll start taking those kinds of actions to get more people to the site. But right now that’s not our problem. “

{mosads}On Sunday, the Obama administration said the healthcare law’s federal portal is now working smoothly for the vast majority of users.

“We feel confident about the site working now as it was originally conceived to do — granted two months later than we or anyone would have liked to have seen,” Palmieri added. 

Jeff Zients, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget, was tasked with overseeing the fix-it process. He said on Sunday that HealthCare.gov was like “night and day” compared to October. 

Zients had been previously appointed to serve as President Obama’s director of the National Economic Council. For now, however, he will continue to oversee HealthCare.gov for the “immediate future,” according to Palmieri, but will assume the other role at some point. 

Once Zients leaves, Palmieri said he will be replaced by someone “whose job it is to focus on the technology, on the website, and to do what we need to do to get the traffic and enrollment numbers that we want.”