Feds say health site's first week was a 'solid start'

More than a half million people selected health plans during the first week of open enrollment on the federal insurance site HealthCare.gov, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Thursday.

HealthCare.gov is used by consumers in 38 states that didn't establish their own insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act.

Of the 543,000 people who submitted applications and chose plans, 34% were new customers and 66% were re-enrolling, CMS said. Nearly 1.2 million people submitted applications for coverage.

Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell called the numbers a "solid start." But she warned that It’s difficult to directly compare this year to last year's start of open enrollment as it started on Nov. 15 last year.

"We know from past experience that people are deadline driven, so we don’t expect to see deadline effects for a few weeks," she said.

As for the numbers, Charles Gaba, a data expert who runs ACAsignups.net, says it's "hard to say what it means yet." The more telling dates will come right after Dec. 15, which is the deadline for people who want to have plans Jan. 1, and during the last week of January, which is the final deadline for enrollment for 2016 plans, Gaba says.

When signups for the state exchanges are added, Gaba estimates the total enrollment so far to be about 714,000.