WASHINGTON, Nov. 1 (UPI) -- Six people enrolled for health coverage using the U.S. government's portal on the first day, documents released by House Oversight Committee Republicans showed.
The documents indicated that by the end of the second day, Oct. 2, 248 enrollments had been completed through problem-plagued healthcare.gov, NBC News reported Thursday.
Notes from a meeting on the morning of Oct. 2 indicated healthcare.gov had a number of "ongoing issues," including "high capacity on the website, direct enrollment not working, VA [Department of Veterans Affairs] system not connecting, [credit rating company] Experian creating confusion with credit check information."
A committee aide said the notes were taken during meetings at the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance, a unit of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which worked on implementing healthcare.gov.
Healthcare.gov launched Oct. 1.
Administration officials have said early enrollment numbers would be very low but would build over time.
"These appear to be notes, they do not include official enrollment statistics," HHS spokeswoman Joanne Peters said in an email to NBC News. "We will release enrollment statistics on a monthly basis after coordinating information from different sources, such as paper, online, and call centers, verifying with insurers, and collecting data from states.
During testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said data about enrollments would be available in mid-November so their reliability could be guaranteed.
"As the secretary said before Congress, we are focused on providing reliable and accurate information and we do not have that at this time," Peters said in the email. "We have always anticipated that the pace of enrollment will increase throughout the enrollment period."
The launch of healthcare.gov has been riddled with functionality and reliability issues that initially prevented people from registering for accounts and enrolling for health insurance. Sebelius has acknowledged the problems and said they would be corrected by the end of November.
