Bamcare’s New York site swoons
ALBANY — New York State’s new online insurance exchange — one of the bright spots in the disastrous national rollout of Obamacare — suffered outages Friday because of heavy demand.
With New Yorkers facing a Monday deadline to sign up for health insurance coverage that starts Jan. 1, some users of the state’s online insurance marketplace on Friday received an error message.
“Due to overwhelming interest . . . the marketplace is currently experiencing a high volume of users. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, and encourage you to try again later,” the message said.
Health Department spokesman Bill Schwarz called the outages as “volume-generated glitches.” The snafu occurred in the morning and had been corrected by the afternoon, he sad.
Except for a few minor bugs that accompanied its launch on Oct. 1, the website, called New York State of Health, had been an unquestioned success.
As of Monday, 363,258 New Yorkers had completed applications on the site and 134,622 people had selected coverage. Enrollment surged 34% last week alone, as the deadline for coverage in 2014 neared.
New York and more than a dozen other states operate their own websites for people to shop for the health care coverage that most Americans are mandated to have under Obamacare.
In 36 other states, people must go through the troubled federal website — healthcare.gov — which was plagued by glitches for weeks until this month.
The Obama administration Thursday said people whose insurance was canceled because of new standards under Obamacare may claim a “hardship exemption” to the requirement that all Americans have coverage by March 31, or face a penalty.
President Obama on Friday defended that decision, noting Obamacare’s rollout has been a “messy pro
cess.”