Just Keep Moving the Goalposts

The White House calls it winning:

Obama adviser Jeffrey Zients said a five-week emergency “tech surge” had doubled the capacity of the online health insurance portal that is crucial to helping millions of people shop for insurance plans, while making it more responsive and less prone to errors.

The administration said the effort’s key improvement was to increase HealthCare.gov’s capacity to 50,000 simultaneous users, which would allow the site to handle a minimum of 800,000 users per day.

But Zients also warned that peak traffic volumes during the coming weeks could eclipse the new capacity as consumers rush to sign up before a December 23 deadline for coverage that begins January 1. That could delay some people from completing online applications for subsidized health coverage.

I’ve said this before but it bears repeating. What should have the Administration flop-sweating isn’t whether or not HealthCare.gov can handle the expected surge of traffic; it’s whether the expected surge materializes. If not, then the Death Spiral begins.

And early indications aren’t very good.