As exchanges opened to a government shutdown, Obamacare “glitches” dominated coverage of the country’s controversial new insurance marketplace.
Buzz about alleged Obamacare glitches first began on social media, where many took to sites like Twitter and Facebook to report long wait times, crashing pages, and other difficulties navigating web-based sign-ups for affordable healthcare plans.
Many took the Obamacare hiccups as a sign the program was poorly executed on the web — but those with a bit of knowledge about the way internet traffic worked realized that the high demand, and not substandard planning, were at the heart of the downtime for ACTA site users.
President Barack Obama himself addressed the rumors of Obamacare glitches on Saturday, explaining that demand for the programs was intense, but that user experiences were easing up every day.
The day ACTA exchanges opened (and the day the government shut down), President Obama predicted that a flood of citizens would cause sites to be intermittently inaccessible to users.
With approval of Obamacare outstripping the service’s expectations, the US Department of Health and Human Services planned to take the site offline over the weekend, and tweak it to allow more concurrent users.
In a statement , the HHS department addressed Obamacare glitches:
“To make further improvements to the system, we will be taking down the application part of the website for scheduled maintenance during off-peak hours over the weekend. The enhancements we are making will enable more simultaneous users to successfully create an account and move through the application and plan shopping process.”
President Obama urged users to be patient if they experienced difficulty in the first days signing up for Obamacare, and reminded everyone that there are several months between now (the opening of the exchanges) and when plans go into effect.
He added that his “message to them would be, each day the wait times are reduced.” On the government shutdown, the President chided Republicans for their intransigence, adding :
“The obsession with the Affordable Care Act, with Obamacare, has to stop. That is not something that should be a price for keeping the government open.”
Review: http://t.co/Qe9UDvKtv5 a winner despite glitches via @usatoday #aca #healthcare #healthreform http://t.co/49sr5v30Tg
— Arthur C Evans, Ph.D (@ArthurCEvans) October 7, 2013
While slight Obamacare glitches have marred web implementation of ACTA, Americans have reacted in an overwhelmingly positive way to the new program.