Consumers seeking more information on their new options under the Affordable Care Act were met with long delays, error messages and a largely non-working federal insurance exchange and call center Tuesday morning.
Heavy Internet traffic and system problems plagued the launch of the health insurance exchanges, a key pillar of President Barack Obama’s health care law. Some of the issues appeared to subside just after 12 p.m. Central time, with some users reporting success in viewing new insurance products offered in Illinois as part of the law.
But others continued to have problems into Tuesday afternoon. For most of Tuesday, attempts to log on to the system were met with error messages: “We have a lot of visitors on our site right now, and we’re working to make your experience here better. Please wait here until we send you to the log-in page. Thank you for your patience.”
I’m taking the training to be a Navigator and can see the program is a tin fiddle. It can’t do what it proposes to do.
The exchange here didn’t work at all because of “technical problems”–The “Health Connector” officials said they are still working on it and hope it will be running by the end of October. According to the paper, the best you could do was call them on the telephone, and if you could get through, give them your telephone number and they assured you they would call back within the next several weeks. But there is no information to be found as to costs, deductibles, comparisons, or anything else.