Covered California Technical Difficulties

Sacramento, CA – The Associated Press reports online enrollment is available for California’s new health insurance exchange after technical glitches on the system’s October 1st opening day forced overnight upgrades.

Covered California spokesman Roy Kennedy says the enrollment portion of the exchange website was taken offline from 8:30 p.m. Tuesday until 10:45 a.m. Wednesday. He attributes some of the problems to pages that were loading slowly and logos for insurance plans that were not displayed correctly. Consumers were still able to browse insurance plan options while the enrollment pages were being fixed.

The AP reports interest from Californians appeared high after the exchange opened for business Tuesday. Kennedy says 7,700 Californians began applications for insurance coverage.
The state’s two call centers received more than 23,000 calls, and there were more than 5.7 million hits on the website by Tuesday afternoon.