Healthcare.gov signed up 462,125 customers in first week

The Obama administration says that nearly a half-million people selected insurance plans through Healthcare.gov during the first week of Obamacare open enrollment, in mid-November. Nearly half (48 percent) were new customers who had not previously purchased coverage last year, suggesting that the law could widen its reach to more uninsured Americans in year two of coverage expansion.

The new numbers, released by Health and Human Services Wednesday, show a faster start to open enrollment this year than in 2013. Last year, during Healthcare.gov’s botched launch, only 106,185 consumers selected health insurance plans during the entire first month of enrollment.

The Obama administration released other data on how users interacted with Healthcare.gov, including applications filed and wait times for call centers. It showed long wait times (over three minutes) to speak to a call center representative in English and many more than 1 million window shoppers on the site (people who explored their plan options, but did not create an application for coverage).

These figures do not include those consumers using the 14 state-based exchanges, in places like California and New York, where the federal government does not run the insurance marketplace.

And they also do not necessary show total enrollment: those who selected a plan still need to send a first month’s premium to their insurance plan in order for their coverage to kick in on January 1.

The administration also specified that these numbers do not include the dental plan sign-ups that were wrongly counted in previous enrollment figures.