Technical problems have made it difficult for many people to enroll in online health insurance exchanges under the new Affordable Care Act—also called the ACA, or Obamacare—since its rollout on October 1. The glitches are reportedly the result of a major software failure that caused part of the site to crash repeatedly during its first week online, The New York Times reports.
The reason for the problems, White House officials claimed, is that the part of the site people accessed to create user accounts to enroll online was unable to keep up with the traffic from millions of people. Ultimately, these technical difficulties stopped users from being able to view any of their insurance options or gain access to information about federal subsidies.
Specific problems on healthcare.gov included the site not recognizing users who made accounts before marketplaces officially opened, or not allowing users to make new accounts. And even after users had successfully established an account, they were often sent an email asking them to verify their email address with a link that lead to nowhere.
President Obama’s top tech experts said contractors are working to rewrite the site’s software in order to make the system work. The government also claimed that the rest of healthcare.gov appears ready to handle the large volume of customers sure to access the site once the current issue is fixed.
But outside analysts are skeptical about the quality of the site’s code overall. “It’s poorly designed,” said Luke Chung, the president of a database company in Virginia who publicly criticized the site. “People higher up are given the excuse that there are too many users. That’s a convenient excuse for the managers to pass up the chain.”
An advisory on the website suggested that it might be faster for customers to apply for coverage by dialing a toll-free government call-center at 800.318.2596 until glitches are fixed. And to avoid frustration, Real Health also suggests simply waiting a few weeks for the technical issues to be ironed out before attempting to enroll.
To learn more about applying for health coverage, click here.
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