President Obama and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius talk about the new exchanges.(Photo: SAUL LOEB, AFP/Getty Images)
[h=3]Story Highlights[/h]
- Users report slow and even unavailable sites
- 24 people sign up for insurance before noon in Conn; 11,000 visit
- California says its exchange site is up and running with few problems
WASHINGTON — Several state- and federal government-run health insurance marketplaces opened Tuesday with glitches, delays and even crashes, marring the launch of the centerpiece of President Obama's health law.
Some of the delays were due to high volume. President Obama said in a White House conference that more 1 million people tried to use the sites before they officially opened at 8 a.m. Eastern time.
The exchanges are the critical part of the Affordable Care Act's requirement that uninsured Americans buy health insurance. They opened today for business and the open-enrollment period for insurance customers will last until March 31, 2014.
"Like every new law, every new product sign up, there are going to be some glitches that we will fix," Obama said, adding that there have been some glitches this morning.
Those glitches frustrated potential insurance customers around the country, such as for John Sanders, of Kaukauna, Wisc.. He said he signed up on the exchange website three weeks ago but hit snags Tuesday.
Sanders called the system's launch "reckless at best. I will not accept the 'heavy traffic' argument. What else would be expected on the national launch date?"
He and others faced many of the same problems online shoppers often do on the busy online shopping day the Monday after Thanksgiving known as Cyber Monday or like the launch of a new retail site.
State and federal governments had no idea what to expect in terms of traffic, said retail technology expert Peggy Pulliam. She says retailers will stress or "load test" their sites simulating a surge of traffic ahead of big shopping days.
"If any simulation they ran for the stress test didn't reflect actual user behavior on that site today, they may have not found the vulnerabilities." says Pulliam, vice president of services for retail technology company Micros. "It's harder to load test a brand new system because you don't know how people are going to browse and shop the site."
Federal site an early bottleneck
Many problems centered on the federal government's HealthCare.gov site, the portal through which many Americans will go to sites geared to their states. The site is handling exchanges for 34 states that defaulted to the federal government for at least the first year.
Consumers around the country frequently got messages telling them to come back later or endured long delays in connecting to the sites.
Bruce Brian, a self-employed real state broker from Greenwood, Ind., said he tried logging into HealthCare.gov are got a computer message: "Your account couldn't be created at this time. The system is unavailable."
"You would just think that with all this time they've had to get it set up and ready to go, they would have been a better premiere," Brian said.
Other potential customers, such as Nicole Argall of Appleton, Wis., were more relaxed. She called the initial difficulties minor given the benefits of having the new coverage.
"I had some trouble with the security question portion, but I'll try again later or tomorrow," Argall said. "My husband and I are both self-employed and we've had issues with pre-existing conditions and being rejected in the past. I think a lot of people with employee-sponsored insurance don't understand that there are lots of people like us that make a good living, but are self-employed."
Much of the glitch could be caused by the interest in the site, according to Joel Ario, formerly the director of the Office of Health Insurance Exchanges at the Department of Health and Human Services and now a managing director at Manatt Health Solutions.
Ario compared the politics surrounding today's launch to a football game between the left and the right.
"This day has gotten a lot more attention than anyone anticipated," he said. "I'm not eligible for the exchange, but I've been on the site. There are going to be reporters. I've seen a lot of people come across my screen saying, 'Check out this state.'"
In the social media universe, there are thousands of people who don't need insurance posting about the glitches they encountered when they visited the federal site. And, for those who do actually need insurance, Ario said it takes a few hits to actually purchase it.
"It's a surprisingly high number to me," Ario said of the millions of hits reported so far. "I think it all goes to that notion that this is supposed to be a six-month gradual process."
In fact, he said the number of people who actually buy insurance today could say a lot more than the number of people who check the site out of curiosity.
Around the country
Early reviews from various states were mixed. For example:
• Connecticut. Jason Madrak, the spokesman for the state's exchange, said there were initial bugs but the exchange had 11,000 visitors and its first customer at 9:30 a.m. and 24 by noon.
"We're off to the races," Madrak said.
• Maryland. The state's marketplace announced a four-hour delay and apologized for the inconvenience. "Thank you for visiting Maryland Health Connection. We are experiencing connectivity issues. Please visit the site again at 12 Noon."
• New York. Traffic apparently overwhelmed its website. Reports on Twitter cited 2 million visitors in the first 90 minutes that nystateofhealth.ny.gov was open for business. A spokesman at the Department of Health at 8:30 a.m. said the site was working fine, but already there were delays, locked screens and error messages. By mid-morning, the site was much slower. While the home page came up on Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome web browsers, server error messages were common when clicking on the individual and small business links.
• Mississippi. At 9 a.m., healthcare.gov would not show Mississippi's exchange. Instead, it displayed a message saying visitors would be directed to the login site as soon as traffic allowed. After several minutes, a message appeared saying the system was down. Several attempts to log in yielded the same result.
• Arkansas. The online exchange in Arkansas was moving at a crawl due to heavy trafficl.Mountain Home, Ark., insurance agent Joey Crump said a number of people have approached him seeking help today with insurance needs but he has not been able to get on. "It' been frustrating," Crump said.
• Iowa. Problems there problems went beyond the exchange. Visiting Nurse Services and Planned Parenthood of the Heartland both received federal grants to hire "navigators," who are to help consumers figure out their options on the new online system. Both agencies say they're working to hire and train navigators, and should have them available within a few weeks.
Reporters trying to ask questions about the website were equally out of luck Tuesday. The Chicago-based Department of Health and Human Services staff bounced back emails stating they were furloughed and unable to answer press inquiries due to the federal government shutdown.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said 52% of her staff is working despite the federal shutdown that started at midnight Tuesday.
Contributing: Brian Eason, The Clarion Ledger; Matthew Daneman, Rochester Democrat & Chronicle; Kevin Pieper, The Baxter (Ark.) Bulletin; Jens Manuel Krogstad, Des Moines Register; Nick Penzenstadler. The Post-Crescent (Appleton, Wisc.); Jess Rollins, Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader.
