Covered California: High demand for opening day sees glitches

LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- Online enrollment for California's new health insurance exchange is back up and running. The system was inundated on opening day Tuesday, forcing overnight upgrades.

Covered California: What you need to know

Online enrollment resumed Wednesday after technical glitches on opening day forced officials to take the site down for repairs.

AltaMed Health Insurance Resource Centers set up an office in Commerce to help people who have questions about the Affordable Care Act and insurance coverage through the Covered California exchange.

"Yes, we have encountered some problems with the portal, in terms of not being up all the time, so by the time we're assisting someone with the location, we have encountered the people that still cannot submit the application right there and then," said Mauricio Correa, an AltaMed spokesman. "So we're asking them to come back next week."

People going online could look through their insurance plan options, but when Eyewitness News tried signing up, it sent us to a page where you could leave information to be contacted.

"You might have a little bit of a wait, you might not for right now while we get some of the performance measures straightened out as far as how fast the calls are being able to be answered and how fast the pages load," said Dana Howard, Covered California.

It's not just happening in California. Other states faced opening day glitches. Covered California says 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.

"Overnight we took some measures to enhance the experience for consumers," said Howard. "We knew that this was going to be something that we would have to engage in on a routine business."

Officials say it's good news there is so much interest in the enrollment process. And shows people are eager to sign up.

Covered California officials say they expect to release some early enrollment data in mid-November.

Covered California: What you need to know

Get more Save Money / Consumer News »

health, health care, health insurance, save money / consumer news, carlos granda

• Comment Now
• Email
• Print
• Report a typo
•