An administration official worried the press would seize on the site's error message. | REUTERS W.H. emails reveal launch fears

Top White House and health officials feared that HealthCare.gov would not work correctly and would set off a wave of bad publicity, according to emails sent shortly before the disastrous rollout of the Obamacare enrollment website.

The emails, released Wednesday evening by House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, included a picture of an error message that has become emblematic of the launch debacle. They were dated Sept. 25 — less than a week before the enrollment portal opened — and immediately created a crisis for the White House.


A White House spokesman said the emails — which use technical terms — focused on problems that could arise if there was high traffic to the site, not on a fear that the site wouldn’t work at all.

( See POLITICO's full Obamacare coverage)

In the emails Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Deputy Chief Information Officer Henry Chao summed up concerns that he said White House Chief Technology Officer Todd Park had expressed.

“When Todd Park and Marilyn [Tavenner] was here yesterday one of the things Todd conveyed was this fear the WH has about hc.gov being unavailable,” Chao said, referring to CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner.

“Todd does have a good point and I think we should have a more comprehensive answer as to how we will ensure high availability,” Chao continued.

Later on in the email chain, which was sent to a few dozen CMS staff and outside contractor personnel, Chao wrote to two colleagues: “… can you think about a better way to convey to the public when the site is not available? I am picturing in my mind all the major print and online publications taking screenshots of what is below and just ramping up the hyperbole about hc.gov not functional.” Attached is picture of an error message which says, “The System is down at the moment.”

( PHOTOS: Obamacare online glitches: 25 great quotes)

White House spokesman Eric Schultz wrote in an email that the focus was on how the system would respond to high volume.

“On the eve of launching a website this complex, it is only natural to raise questions and prepare for all scenarios, including high volume,” he wrote in an email.

“Understandably, we wanted systems in place to identify and respond quickly to any technical issues. As we have said many times now, nobody anticipated the size and scope of the problems we experienced once the site launched, but our concern at the time was increasing the site’s capacity to handle many users — a concern that proved prescient since demand to this day remains very high for quality affordable health care. Since that time, experts have been working night and day to get the site capable of handling high volume and that is where our focus is, and should be, right now,” Schultz added.

Follow @politico