Quetta Pipkin, left, of the Medical Foundation of Chattanooga, assists Paige Carlton during an Affordable Care Act health care enrollment event at Cleveland State Community College on March 26, 2014, in Cleveland, Tenn.(Photo: John Rawlston, AP)
Story Highlights
- Website issue had been resolved shortly after 1:30 p.m. ET
- Message said callers should expect to wait 5 to 7 days to hear from a specialist
- White House did not yet have a date of when it would release a final tally of those who signed up via site
With the midnight deadline nearing for uninsured Americans to buy health insurance or face a penalty, the federal online exchange on Monday was flooded with consumers who waited until the last second to shop for plans — and found themselves overwhelmed by a technical glitch that made it difficult for some to even get past the initial step of creating an account.
Just after noon, Department of Health and Human Services spokeswoman Joanne Peters said the tech team monitoring HealthCare.gov identified an issue that prevented new users from logging onto the site and enrolling in a plan.
Shortly after 1:30 p.m., Peters said that the issue had been resolved, but some new users continued to experience difficultly logging in.
Agents, consumers and USA TODAY reporters who tried using the site on Monday were being sent immediately to the virtual waiting room — which Peters said was to be expected given the crush of traffic.
"HealthCare.gov has a lot of visitors right now!" was the message visitors were greeted with in the virtual waiting room. "We need you to wait here so we can make sure there's room for you to have a good experience on our site."
A recording at the federal exchange's call center set up to help consumers said callers should expect to wait five to seven days to hear back from a specialist, but they would still be able to enroll in an insurance plan even though the sign-up deadline would have passed.
Midnight Monday is the deadline for open enrollment and the last chance to avoid a penalty for not purchasing insurance in 2014, which will be due with federal income taxes in April 2015.
Peters said there was a record number of people trying to use the site on Monday — with roughly 125,000 people on the site at the same time at peak of traffic, she said. More than 1.6 million people had visited the site as of 2 p.m. on Monday, and more than 840,000 people had phoned the call center as of late Monday afternoon.
The White House also touted the fact that that there were 2.9 million visits to the website over the weekend, and last week they counted more phone calls from Americans inquiring about signing up for insurance that they saw in all of February.
The entire website was down briefly early Monday, but the White House said it was for extended maintenance to deal with the expected heavy traffic on the last day of open enrollment.
No one questioned whether traffic was heavy, but many insurance agents that struggled with the balky website on Monday said the federal site appeared to have bigger issues.
In Pennsylvania, agent Angie Surra of St. Marys Insurance complained the site was so glitch-plagued "you can't get anything done."
She added that her struggles with HealthCare.gov on Monday reminded her of the site's troubled first days last October.
In Monroe, La., agent Roanita Jenkins said after the site told her an account was successfully created, it told her it wasn't valid. After an hour on the phone, even a call center representative couldn't get the application started, Jenkins said.
Consumers ran into some glitches on the last day to sign up for health insurance on March 31, 2014.(Photo: healthcare.gov)
"Without the site showing the account has been created on their end, we are not able to log in and submit an application," Jenkins said. "The only way to submit an application is over the phone with .gov and that isn't working very well, either."
Bob Ziff, an agent in Morrisville, Pa., said his office helped about 200 people enroll in the exchange before this weekend.
He said the system worked "reasonably well" before Sunday; then he and his agents started getting a message when they visited HealthCare.gov that the site was overloaded. Since Monday morning, he has only been able to enroll one person.
At one point Monday morning, the site told visitors that it was "down for maintenance" and asked people to "please try again later." At midday, the site showed a message saying the site had a lot of visitors and needed shoppers to go to a virtual waiting room until they could be connected.
Anticipating a surge in interest as the deadline neared, the administration announced last week it would extend the deadline for those who have issues signing up.
Insurance agents confirmed that they are seeing a last-minute crush of people trying to enroll. "My phone is ringing off the hook," said Ronnell Nolan, CEO of Health Agents for America, which represents insurance agents.
Even with Monday's problems with the online health care exchange, the White House tried to put the focus on the progress since the early days of the troubled launch of the website.
"There has been a remarkable story since the dark days of October and November, which has resulted in a situation where here on the last day of enrollment we're looking at a number substantially larger than 6 million enrolled," White House press secretary Jay Carney told reporters. "I dare say that there are few people in this room — including some of the folks who work in the White House — who would have predicted that we would get to that number."
Carney said the White House did not yet have a date of when it would release a final tally for those who signed up for coverage through the federal and state exchanges during the six-month open enrollment period.
Contributing: Alicia McElhaney
Source: Top Stories - Google News - http://ift.tt/1hWjewc
Today is the big Obamacare deadline (except for the extension 
