PPACA customers go window shopping

(AP Photo/Jon Elswick, File)

Nov. 10 (Bloomberg) — Potential Obamacare customers can peek at 2015 prices for the program’s health plans today after the government said it would release a “window-shopping” feature overnight.

The preview feature, added to the government’s revamped healthcare.gov website, is intended to ease pressure on the system by allowing curious consumers a look at prices for health plans a week before enrollment begins. Last year, consumers who tried to use the website were met with errors and delays that prevented millions from signing up for several months.

Challenges are mounting for the second year of enrollment in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act as Republicans gained control of Congress last week and the Supreme Court announced it will consider whether a key feature, subsidies to reduce the cost of insurance, should be available to all Americans. The Obama administration, meanwhile, must simultaneously persuade more than 7 million existing customers to renew and sign up millions more uninsured people.