The Department of Health and Human Services is under new management. Sylvia Burwell has taken over for Kathleen Sebelius. Burwell’s new lieutenants include Andy Slavitt and Kevin Counihan. Slavitt helped HHS recover from its disastrous launch of healthcare.gov, repairing the site so that it could function normally and allow the program as a whole to work. Counihan was in charge of Connecticut’s exchange, which was among the best performers anywhere in the country.

This year, healthcare.gov and the state exchanges all need to raise their game. While 8 million people signed up for private health plans via Obamacare last year, an estimated 8 million people eligible for subsidized private plan coverage remain uninsured. This isn’t a surprise. Experts, like those at the Congressional Budget Office, have always predicted it would take several years before the law reached all of the people it could. Even so, it's hard not to be disturbed by polls showing widespread ignorance of how the Affordable Care Act works and how to take advantage of it. A recent McKinsey & Co. survey found that most respondents who remained uninsured were eligible for subsidies but didn't know it.

Amazingly, that included people who had shopped on the exchanges. Somehow, hundreds of thousands of people managed to use healthcare.gov or one of the state versions, go through part or all of the shopping experience, yet never realize that—thanks to federal tax credits—they could pay a fraction of the sticker price for whatever plan they chose.

This is obviously a big problem, one Burwell and her team have said they recognize. In recent interviews, they have singled out improving the consumer experience on healthcare.gov as one of their top priorities. But what exactly would that mean? It’s not an easy question to answer, because there are two obvious ways to improve healthcare.gov—and doing one will inevitably make the one harder.

The first challenge is making healthcare.gov simpler. To that end, job one is giving visitors a quick idea how much they're likely to pay. Last year, one of the first questions that applicants faced was “Do you intend to file taxes for 2014?” Many low-income people who don’t pay taxes clicked “no” on this, unaware that they were effectively disqualifying themselves for subsidized coverage. Kate Kozeniewski, who as a certified ACA “navigator” and program coordinator at Resources for Human Development, a national agency based in Philadelphia, helped thousands of people sign up for insurance, said that “If I could ask anything in the world, it would be that they somehow indicate that if you click 'no' you're not going to get any subsidies.” That's because the subsidies come through the tax system, and, as Kozeniewski explained, “You have to file taxes to get a tax credit.″