By Gintautas Dumcius

State House News Service

BOSTON -- The state's revamped health-care website has seen 1.5 million unique visits in the last four weeks, a number that is expected to grow given the looming Tuesday deadline for people to pick a health-care plan and pay for it, state officials said.

The deadline applies to Massachusetts residents who need health insurance starting on Jan. 1.

The site has enrolled 114,321 people, including 98,530 into Medicaid, or MassHealth, since the re-launch.

The health-care website system has had "no outages" contributing to a "night and day" experience for consumers compared to last year's poor performance, according to Maydad Cohen, who was tapped by Gov. Deval Patrick to overhaul the website.

Cohen said the information-technology costs for the rebuild of the website are still within the $254 million budget for the project, paid for largely through grants from the federal government.

Cohen released data showing that 53,490 people found eligible for qualified health plans selected or paid for a plan. So far, 18,187 people have paid premiums for plans that begin on Jan. 1.

The Health Connector is open today from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. to assist consumers using the website. Cohen said they expect heavy call volume and wait times on Monday and Tuesday, ahead of the Tuesday deadline to pick and pay for a plan effective Jan. 1.

Health-care officials have put out mailers and robo-calls to reach out to potentially eligible residents.

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Deadline looms for health-care choices